


Shapeshifter

by Honeythief



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Attempts at smut somewhere later, Character Death, Cults, Gore, Human Sebastian, M/M, Organized Crime, Past Child Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Possessive Sebastian, Psychology, Satanism, Sebastian is basically a discount Hannibal Lecter, Serial Murder, Slow Build, Therapist Sebastian, Trauma, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:40:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 23
Words: 84,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23597002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Honeythief/pseuds/Honeythief
Summary: Sebastian can tell lies, and he tells them very well. He takes no orders, answers to no master; but he is no less obsessed with Ciel's soul.
Relationships: Sebastian Michaelis/Ciel Phantomhive
Comments: 306
Kudos: 320





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First things first: this is not a wholesome fic. I really can't think of a single wholesome thing that happens along the way  
> It's modern AU, but I aim to make this as close to canon as possible when it comes to the dynamic between Seb and Ciel
> 
> Also it's going to be a pretty long ride, so I hope you stick around ^_^

I tap the 'record' button and turn expectantly to what is a blot of bright red amid the toned browns of my study. Her clothes, hair and lipstick all come in the most furious shade of crimson I can imagine, including the leather case of her phone and the car that stands parked in my driveway.

And yet all the red, however vibrant, looks dim on her today. Lifeless. Her make-up is sloppy and rushed, no more perfect eyeliner or powdered cheeks. I spot rogue strands of hair and creases on her smart suit from Cartier. All her expressiveness and gripping candour have soured, waned, and in lieu of her brazen laughter she gives only tight-lipped smiles. The grim tendrils of depression have been tightening their grip on her week after week, and I haven't been able to do much about it.

“I know we ended our last session on discussing your stress at work, but I would like for you to take a moment and reflect upon that course. Do you feel like we can get anywhere in that direction?”

She's silent. We both know the only direction is backward, inward, straight to where live the demons of her past.

“Not really.”

“No, because it's a dead end.” And not the first one we've hit, either; Miss Dalles's demons refused to reveal themselves no matter my numerous, glib attempts at drawing them out. She was terrified of them, I could see.

“We need to start chipping away at what's _causing_ the stress, and you know as well as I that it's not the work in itself. I am not here to pressure you, Angelina, but in whole three months you've only got worse. All I ask is one little thread from which we can work our way to the core, however slow you need.”

She sits rigid and uncertain. I look at her and can think of nothing but red, red, red. My own wardrobe is almost entirely black, though it pales in comparison to Miss Dalles's red mania. All because _Vincent_ had said it suits her, the man whose name she uttered with reverence and longing, that one demon from her past she couldn't stop from clawing to the surface. He was still only the tip of the proverbial iceberg, however, and I needed to dig much deeper.

“Here's the thing, Sebastian. It's precisely cause we're closer to the core that I'm getting worse.” She wrings out a sigh and starts fumbling to retrieve a pack of cigarettes from her purse. Sure enough, she still smokes Marlboro Red; I always have to air the study after her sessions. "I mean, I know I can't avoid it forever. It's just around the corner, and I have to face it.” Her tense features slacken at the first taste of nicotine, then tense back up again. “I have to, right?” A hint of hope in her voice, as if counting on me to assure her that no, she didn't have to, it was perfectly all right to live the rest of her life on the brink of hysteria.

“In Jung's words, what you resist not only persists but grows in size. In my own words, the longer it stews inside of you the more it all rots. You cannot live in the present and look out into the future without confronting your past.”

Angelina barks out a nervous laugh. “Well, shit. Do you know why I rescheduled our session to today?” She pauses for another drag: bold, deep, nonchalant. I've always thought she smoked like a man, exhaling ponderous clouds of smoke like she didn't have a damn to give. “Today's the anniversary.”

“Of the accident?”

“Of the accident. It's been three years now, and fuck if I can go through another anniversary alone, I can't. So here I am.”

“To talk about it?”

“I mean, to try. It's now or never.”

I slide the ashtray further toward her side of the table. “Don't let the feelings overwhelm you all at once. Start slow and get used to the idea, but don't block anything out. Let it run its course.”

She nods thoughtfully and seems to drift somewhere far off. Our session is ticking away as she smokes in silence, but I don't rush and I don't pressure. She's my last today, and I don't intend to let her go until she spits out every single one of her demons.

“Fuck it. Could I have a drink? I can't do it without a drink,” she says, stubbing out her cigarette in one, aggressive jab. Such remarkable confidence, for an alcoholic, to ask her therapist to drink during a session. Had I a modicum of integrity, I would refuse; but since I have not a shred and never will, I stand up to pour her generously from the crystal decanter near my desk. If liquor is what she needs to talk, so be it. I never care for means, only the end. 

Something breaks in her as soon as she takes the glass. “God, _whisky_ ,” she croaks out, swirling the amber liquid inside. “That was the first thing I grabbed when I found out. So much whisky...” 

From the way she spins and turns the drink in her hands, one might think she'd want to take her time with it—savour every sip of that long-coveted poison—but then it's all down her throat in a single greedy gulp. Rash and unceremonious, like all of her. She sets down the lipstick-stained glass and dwells on the aftertaste long enough to make me impatient.

“Walk me through it,” I remind of my presence. “Every thought, every feeling. It started the day of the accident, yes? Tell me what happened when you heard the news.”

She's out of excuses to stall. No cigarette, no drink. 

“It just didn't reach me at first. It comes tumbling down on you so suddenly and doesn't seem real for a long, bizarre while.” She stops, seeing if she can go on. She can. “One minute I'm relaxing after work, the next I'm being spammed with condolences and funeral arrangements and inheritance proceedings... did you know? If you're next of kin of the illustrious Phantomhives, tragic death is all formalities and no time for tears. I picked up call after call, lawyers and insurance agents and God knows who else. I stood frozen in my living room for that long, bizarre while until it occurred to me that I should at least pick up my nephew from the hospital.”

I raise my brows. She's never mentioned a nephew, and the mention alone makes her light another cigarette. Not to smoke, I don't think; just to hold it between her fingers. 

“So I took a taxi. You know the afternoon traffic in London – I had all the time in the world to break out of stupor. I watched a flock of pedestrians make way across Davies Street, just looking to get from one side to the other, just like _they_ were trying to do, and that's when it began to feel real.” Her voice wavers, roughened from tobacco and liquor. “Masses of people trickled past my view and I couldn't help but picture them mangled into bloody, broken pieces. I imagined a grotesque heap of crooked limbs and thought: this is really all he is, now. It's no nightmare, it's no joke. My Vincent is nothing more than a disassembled corpse in the freezer.” She wraps both arms around her frame, talking to the empty whisky glass and not myself. “I puked all over the back seat. Oh, how the driver fumed at me! I do remember his meaty, furious face, but all I could think of were my sister's guts smeared across the street. And once I saw my nephew sitting on the hospital bed, I thought of crushed spines and skulls smashed open like melons. The man I loved and the sister I both loved and hated were dead, mutilated beyond recognition, and here was their ten-year-old son, with barely a scratch.” Her fists clench and her cigarette, untouched, sheds ashes on my expensive sofa. I grimace in distaste, but she's too far gone to notice.

“I should've been relieved. I should've lunged forward and held him tight, thanked God over and over for sparing at least him. But I didn't, no. I began to hate that brat with my entire being. Because why did he have to survive? Just to remind me of them every single day? Why couldn't he have died with them, or better yet, instead of them?” 

My tall French clock announces the end of our session, but I make no move to interrupt her. 

“After the funeral, I suspended my practice and Ciel got indefinite leave from school. Now finally came the time for tears, but I was too busy draining bottles of whisky to shed even one. I don't know if Ciel cried, either; I left him alone for days, no money and no food, wallowing drunkenly about dingy alleys and posh Chelsea bars. I just needed to be anywhere but home, someplace I wouldn't have to look at his face.” She shudders at the mere prospect, as though her nephew was some deformed monstrosity too repulsive for words. The forgotten cigarette burns a hole in her red skirt, and she's lucky it's her skirt and not my sofa. 

“I don't even remember the first time I got there. Suppose I staggered aimlessly around Chinatown until they finally let me in. I wouldn't know how to find a gambling den while sober, but then I was anything but sober and everything seemed possible. I stayed, then came again, then kept returning, and before I knew it I was already one of the regulars, and everyone was calling me Madame Red for some reason.” She strains out a humourless laugh, picking at the hem of her jacket. “Forget my share of Phantomhive inheritance, forget all manner of personal savings – I gambled through my wealth like lightning. Pool, mahjong, poker. I drank, smoked and bought piles of red clothes. Funny, isn't it? How one’s lifetime of hard work can go down the drain in mere months. How one event can instantly change the rest of our days. Here I was, Doctor Angelina Dalles, guzzling _baijiu_ and laughing at lewd jokes with rich, opium-brained degenerates! I felt at home in that stuffy shithole, free from all worries... until the day I squandered my last penny.” She scowls, flicking the burnt cigarette to the floor. I calm myself with a deeper breath.

“Lau, the owner, seemed pleased. I remember that smug smirk on his face all too well. You're out of luck and out of money, my dear Madame Red, what else do you have?” She imitates the man's voice, finishing with a scoff. “I put down my losing hand of cards and pondered really hard about everything I had left. A townhouse in Earl's Court, a closed private clinic, a wardrobe full of red clothes... and a little nephew who I really wished was dead. See, I didn't care if I lost it all so long as I could keep playing, and Lau told me there was a certain arrangement that we could come to—but only if that nephew of mine was cute.” For some reason, this makes her erupt in laughter – the eerie, not-so-sane kind.

“Really, what a question! I thought of my sister, always outshining me with her radiant smile and big blue eyes. I thought of _him_ —” she stammers for the first time, groping for words to adequately convey the perfection of Vincent Phantomhive. “How could his child be anything short of the loveliest creature on earth? All those sighs of wonder he drew from the moment he was born, all those envious glances he collected from other parents... I even had a picture, folded and forgotten somewhere inside my wallet. Vincent, Rachel, Ciel and myself in front of the Louvre. He was one grumpy nine-year-old, I tell you, and the fact we'd managed to make him smile for the shot was practically a miracle. I stared at myself on the creased photograph, at my own happy grin and the arm I'd put on Ciel's shoulder... how unreal, how absurd, as though it had happened in another lifetime! Lau handed the photo to one of his Chinese patrons, then over to that fat German who always tried to cheat, then around the room to anyone who wanted a look... and I could only sit back as they argued and tossed about gargantuan sums of money like it were nothing. They bid higher and higher until the German banged his fist on the table, yelled the last offer and that was it – going once, going twice, I had auctioned away my nephew's virginity.”

Angelina lifts her head to look at me with wild, watery eyes. She's being torn apart from the inside, isn't she? I can tell, but I can never relate.

“I brought the German home. Took him upstairs to Ciel's room. Lau gave me something to drug him so he wouldn't remember, but I wanted him to remember. All the time I stood just outside his door, listening and thinking. How the tables have turned! Just three months earlier the boy still had everything he could possibly wish for, from looks to smarts to rich, loving parents! Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, as they, always the best and the brightest. But there is something fragile about beautiful, perfect things— you know? Something that makes you want to hurt and break and corrupt them. Like a cute kitten you want to cuddle and strangle at the same time, just to see what a pitiful sound it would make. Have you ever felt that way?”

I suppress the urge to laugh. Have I ever felt that way, really!

“So I'd hoped he'd cry or scream or call to me for help, but he made no sound. Disappointing, really, but I did feel better once I saw him all broken right after. With this my perfect nephew's luck had completely run out, and I? I had enough money to pay off my debts and enough to wager more still, all without lifting a single finger! It was too good to pass up. I struck a deal with Lau: I would split my profits forty-sixty, he would supply me with customers and guarantee discretion.” Her leg starts skipping up and down and her hands wring together like she were washing them under a sink.

“No permanent damage. No photos and no taping. Use a rubber. You break the rules, you deal with Lau. Long as they paid the fee and stuck to my commandments, I couldn't care less what those perverts did to him behind closed doors. While they were having their way with him upstairs, I was downstairs drinking through the previous night's share. And afterwards, I would go wash him off of spunk and piss and sometimes blood, like those bored nurses at old people's homes. And guess what, he never uttered a single word! Aunt An, why are you doing this to me? Aunt An, why do you let those people hurt me? No, no. It was as if he knew why.” She starts scratching at her wrist, rocking back and forth like the patients of insane asylums, her babbling now frantic and breathy. “He never said anything, just— stared at me, _through_ me, with those big hollow eyes of his, one violet and the other blue like his mother's, have you ever seen eyes like that? I'd grown my nails long so I reached out to dig and scratch at that freaky violet eye until blood ran down his cheek but it was still there, so I took the knife I used to cut bandages and made just one slice before my phone rang and I couldn't finish the job.”

She looks to me again, as if for help, gaze jittery like that of a frightened animal, or that of a human being faced suddenly with the cruelty of their own actions. I say nothing, leaning against the palm of my hand, sporting a little frown to make myself appear somewhat disturbed. 

“It went on for a month. Can you imagine? I was whoring my nephew off to strangers while my neighbours wished me good fucking day and offered me tea! Vincent's sister flew back to France after the funeral and had no idea, _no one_ had any idea, everyone was feeling so very sorry for our loss. And I would've kept it up for God knows how long—probably as long as I could afford to get away with it, until someone finally found out—but one night came those three, and my little enterprise was over.” She cringes at the memory of whomever she meant by 'those three', scraping still faster at the reddening skin of her arm. Were her nails as long as when she tried to gouge out her nephew's eye, by now she would've surely drawn blood. 

“I knew at once they meant trouble. They wore masks, one plain black and the other two almost beautiful and ornate, like a posh Halloween costume or something out of an opera. I'd bought a gun from one of Lau's patrons and fetched it as they disappeared upstairs, hoping they would finish whatever sick shit they were into and just be on their way like everyone else. One of them spoke louder than the others, said something about bad sacrifice and damaged goods—how thin Ciel was, how spaced out, how his eye was infected and they would need to find somebody else—but since they'd already come so far, they might as well make it worth their time. And what do you know; I finally heard Ciel scream. He screamed so loud they had to gag him and then I panicked because what if they killed him? How the hell was I going to explain that, and where the hell was I going to get money for booze? I heard sizzling and knew they'd taken a fire poker from the room next door, but I was too terrified to move and just stood there as they beat him and fucked him until he was too tired too scream, until he fell so silent that I thought he was dead and they were just using his corpse. But then the ringing came, from two phones at once, one slightly delayed and clashing with the other, both playing that creepy squeaky tune I'll never get out of my head.” She attempts to hum it in a broken voice, no longer scratching but digging all five nails into her wrist. “Some sort of alarm. Or call. Cue to stop, and they had to get going. Put him out of his misery, the loud one said, and I didn't even lift the gun in my hand. They tossed me a bundle of quids on their way out, for a nice little coffin, and I stood staring at our good Queen's printed image until the door slammed shut and they were gone, and then I"—she draws a shuddering breath—"and then I finally moved to peer inside. Ciel was up on his bed, curled in a ball, covered in horrid burns and bruises. So tiny, so fragile, wheezing and clutching at his slit throat.” A single tear rolls from her eye, soaking into the skin of her cheek.

“What was I going to tell the police? Lau wouldn't help me, Lau would wash his hands clean, I was alone and the brat was dead—no, _dying_ , his heart rate was slow and that was good, it stalled the bleeding, there was still time to save both him and myself. I had no tools but then I remembered that smirking fucking creep I met at Lau's, some underground doctor who ran a funeral home for cover and gave me his card, so I did what first aid I could and wrapped Ciel in a blanket and carried him down the stairs, onto the street and into the car, but when I tried to get the engine going my hands just wouldn't stop shaking, and if it weren't for that half gram of cocaine I had in my bag he wouldn't have made it, and if it weren't two in the morning he would've bled out in traffic. But I got there under ten minutes and the creep asked no questions, he stitched up the cut all nice and clean and then he treated the burns and Ciel lived, scarred and half-blind but he lived.”

She takes deep, shaky inhales, making up for the breath she couldn't catch while trying to spit everything out at once. 

“The second he woke, I threatened him to keep his mouth shut or else. I thought up a dozen sham stories he could tell about his eye. But the day he got well enough to return to school, I was horrified. The darkest of scenarios kept flashing before my eyes and all I could do was drown them in more whisky. Months passed, somehow, and no one came knocking on my door: no prosecutor, no goons sent by Lau, no three Satanists to finish the job. I'd spent almost every penny to pay the creep, so I had no choice but to reopen my clinic. Just go back to a semblance of normal life.”

The sun seeping into my study had dimmed since she arrived, ripening into a late orange glow. I uncross and recross my legs, looking down at the shaky hunch of a woman upon my sofa. Daring Miss Dalles, now eaten alive by her own demons. Oh, they had absolutely no mercy on her.

“We coexist. We memorise our daily schedules and stick to specific parts of the house. I leave him dinner in the fridge and allowance on the kitchen table. He writes me notes whenever there is something I need to know about: parent meetings at school, changes in his timetable, things he needs more money for. What pretty handwriting he has, just like his father.” She peers blankly ahead – not at me, not the glass, not the ceiling. At empty space. “I haven't seen him in those three years, not once. I wonder how much he's grown, I wonder if—” Her voice hitches, falters, then raises all at once to a gut-wrenching sob, as though she'd been underwater and emerged just seconds away from drowning. It finally comes, the climax. The crack-up. Her pale face twists in torture and she seizes the sides of her head, howling madly like a banshee, “Oh God oh my God oh God God God what have I done?? What have I done to their sweet little boy??”

The demons leap to tear her asunder, and all I do is sit back and enjoy the show. She writhes and wails and her tears surge down in a fierce flood, smearing what little make-up she'd bothered to wear on the anniversary of her downfall. The mascara was not even remotely waterproof and the lipstick is soon reduced to glossy red smudges. Her onslaught stirs in me about as much emotion as would a rerun of last week's game of cricket; seated calmly as ever in my chair, I let her cry and I let myself think. My heart – the internal organ that people metaphorically attribute the source of emotion – was not moved by the boy’s fate. What was moved by the boy’s fate, was my professional curiosity. Yes, it certainly stirred.

And it's not so much the fate itself but the fact it had happened to a child. Children are sensitive, simply put, and this simple fact was known for centuries before neuroscience could prove just how much. “In the case of a young and tender thing, the most important part is the beginning,” wrote Plato. “Anything received into the mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable.” But unlike old Plato, I had the knowledge from years of psychiatric studies and access to technologies he could hardly have even dreamt. I knew, _a posteriori_ , just how tender and malleable was the brain of a child, how the tiniest of tremors could resound far and wide into the future. Plato, using the Greek word 'trauma', had no way of knowing it would someday come to mean not just the wounds of the flesh, but also the wounds of the mind and soul that did not heal quite as easily. I do wonder, what did the poor little Phantomhive's wounds look like inside and out? They were festering, for sure, infected like his blind violet eye; wounds that have crippled, gnarled his limbs and ached every second of every day for three, lonely years.  
  
It's those three years, precisely, that intrigue me the most. How was it that every day he managed to get up for school, avoid his aunt and act normal enough not to attract the attention of teachers, peers, the school counsellor? Three years, and no one has looked at this boy and thought there was something wrong with him? No one thought to inquire after his mutilated eye or the unambiguously shaped scar on his neck? Not one classmate saw the marks on his flesh when changing for PE?

My attention shifts back to Miss Dalles, still shaking in violent convulsions upon my sofa. The moment her demons laid themselves bare, I lost interest. What more could she offer to my benefit? With her every weakness and dirty secret exposed, she could entertain or surprise me no longer. I've got my sights on much tastier quarry, and now she's nothing but an obstacle in my way.

I turn off the recorder, snatch one tissue from the coffee table (meant for patients to have something to blow their nose into as they whine about ruined marriages and despotic mothers), and take a seat next to the weeping woman. She stills when the upholstery dips under my weight, hesitantly prying her hands away from the red, swollen wreck of her face. Such an ugly crier. Gently I take her by the chin and swipe the tissue across her wet cheeks, attempting to erase the ungainly mess of make-up that graced her with the appearance of a wet clown. 

She seems soothed by the proximity and tender touch. Captivated, even, as she watches me keenly through never-ending tears. I tend to have that effect on people, even those in the midst of a mental breakdown. “You don't think I'm a monster?” she whispers, letting me wipe her clean.

We lock eyes. A therapist should be first and foremost non-judgmental. A therapist needs to be someone who would never think 'what a loser' or 'what a monster'. In theory, a therapist is there to understand all of the whys and guide through all of the hows; in practice, a therapist cannot block his judgement because he, too, is human. Myself, though arguably far from human, judged Angelina Dalles like I judged every other soul who sat on my sofa. I had absolutely no mercy on her, either.

“Monsters do not feel remorse,” I answer. “Monsters do not seek help. And you need it more than ever, Angelina, but so does your nephew.”

She flinches, forced back into reality. All her problems ceased to exist for that short, intimate moment she spent gazing into my eyes. 

“I fear your case requires urgent tending. Watching you for the past weeks and watching you now—with all the guilt you've unearthed and may not be prepared to handle—I cannot help but think it best to refer you to an institution.”

“What?” Her tears finally stop flowing. “The loony bin? No, no, I'm not crazy.”

“It's not a matter of crazy,” I cautiously correct her, summoning a look of concern upon my features. “It's about insurance and supervision. So that you cannot harm yourself.”

“Harm, like—?” She scoffs, pausing to look for the answer in my eyes. “I'm not going to kill myself, Sebastian!”

“Look at your left wrist.”

She seems thrown off guard. Lowering her head, she only just notices the vehement scratches and chafed red skin. 

“Your response to emotional distress was to hurt yourself, Angelina. Tell me that you have never thought of death as a solution.”

She tears up again, shaking her head in feeble denial. The solution must have crossed her as a passing, hopeless though. Now it will always sit persistently in the back of her mind.   
  
“As your therapist, I have two choices. In cases involving the safety of minors, I am allowed to break confidentiality and hand the matter to authorities.” I halt briefly, delighting in the look of panic upon her face. Yes, I can tell on you, why so surprised? I have it all recorded, too. Didn't pay attention when I explained the policies on our first session, did we? “Or, if possible, I can choose to handle the matter within my own means. I believe we can settle everything without unnecessary exposure. You've trusted me thus far; will you trust me to choose what's best for you and your nephew?”

She nods, of course. I didn't give her much of an alternative. Trust me, or it's off to the slammer.

“Very good. First, I'm going to need you to phone your lawyer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so long-ass first chapter  
> Updates will be pretty frequent probably cause boy do I have time 
> 
> Please let me know if you had any thoughts!!


	2. Chapter 2

Fools rarely realise they're fools. Schizophrenics often believe they're sane. Alcoholics tend to deny addiction until their last breath. I, too, should deem myself perfectly normal—and yet never once did I doubt that I was anything other than different.

The caregivers assumed I was merely timid, and were happy enough to leave me cooped up inside of my shell. I did not start fights, throw toys or wail endlessly at the smallest trifle. Quiet, polite, I watched the rowdy theatre that my peers perfomed for attention and felt like I was observing an alien species. Why did everyone seem to cling to the idea that their parents would someday come back for them? What was there to miss about a pair of nameless, faceless figures? I knew I was supposed to be feeling lonely, forsaken, sad—but those were little more than empty words I could not associate with actual impressions. They rang hollow, like an abstract scientific thesis I lacked the capacity to make sense of.

The caregivers brought me books to pass time. They didn't know, of course, that until then I'd passed my time enjoying what little torments I could inflict on those younger and weaker while no one was around to see. It was through books that I came to be adopted, reading quietly in a corner and perpetuating my image as a timid, reflective child. Everyone looked for smart and well-mannered, and the Greenhills – an elderly couple who had lost their biological daughter to leukemia – would not have settled for anything less. They were of the cultured and affluent sort, always on the run and always having ten urgent things to take care of at once. They had no time to invest in my upbringing, no energy left to care, and no genuine affection for anything save each other. All they wanted was a ready product to serve a single purpose: an heir they were no longer able to beget on their own.

Mrs Greenhill's second degree was in psychology. Perhaps if she hadn't been so absorbed in her pharmaceutical sales, she might have noticed some of the signs and made my life take a wholly different (and unsatisfying) turn. She might have made the connection between my delinquency and detachment and the sudden disappearance of their family dog. But being a troubled orphan with straight As and singular charm, I always enjoyed the benefits of leniency and prompt forgiveness for my faults. I had an effect on people and was only just beginning to use it to my advantage, and the more time I spent in Mrs Greenhill's library, the more I discovered the language to describe what went on in other people's heads—as opposed to what went on in my own.

Yes, a firm line had to be drawn between the two. Others felt the need for love and belonging; I felt the need to take that away from them. Others saw misery and felt compassion; I fed on misery and poured salt on the wounds. I didn't have what others called 'dreams' or 'passions', only that insistent itch of an urge I could find no name for, swelling and tearing me from within like a hunger. I was at once starving and clueless as to what I'd actually like to have for dinner, and it must be true that appetite comes with eating because mine certainly couldn't stop growing. It wasn't enough to tease and torment or to knock out a couple of teeth; I kept wanting only more, to see blood and to spill blood. 

I'll never forget the first time I felt it, nor any of the numerous that followed. I was fifteen, walking back the empty school corridors after another detention. She blocked my path on top of the staircase – Mathilda Simmons, one year my senior, returning from whatever tutoring she required to get through another term. From the start I'd felt disgust at her simplicity, coarse advances and obnoxious demeanor; at her rumpled uniform, gum-smacking and slurred speech. She leaned against the wall and crossed both hands over her pushed-up breasts, prattling and chattering while I looked at her without seeing or hearing, overcome by that hectic urge.

“Can't take your eyes off them tits, eh?” I heard through my haze, and in that haze I reached out and gave her a push. 

The steps were steep and made of concrete. She broke her jaw on the ninth, her neck somewhere along the fourteenth, and by the time she reached the bottom I had already become a killer. The halls were silent as I descended—shivering, _feeling_ —to take a closer look. There she was, a sprawl of limbs, glassy eyes staring vacantly ahead. I admired her crooked neck, dislodged jaw, the bloody gash on her forehead... and I smiled. I smiled, because I finally felt alive.

Basking in my orgasmic wonder, I heard the footsteps too late to dash in the opposite direction. A sharp staccato of high heels came to an abrupt halt somewhere behind my back, followed by what I recognised as the voice of my history teacher. "Oh God," it said.

I didn't always understand emotion, but I did understand the concept of consequence; pushing someone down the stairs and grinning over their dead body was bound to produce some of the worst. In order to avoid consequences, I had to lie. I had to pretend. Between my teacher's shocked gasp and the instant I would inevitably have to turn my back, I had only the briefest of moments to think.

Death usually made people cry or panic, I noticed. _Panic_ – another husk of a word. Widened eyes, bunched brows, slack mouth. Erratic movements, incoherent speech, voice trembling and pitched somewhat higher than usual. That was panic, was it not? Utter shock and confusion. 

“Michaelis?” she stuttered, and I knew I had to turn.

“Mrs Cole— she fell, she swayed and she just fell, I swear I tried to catch her, I'm so sorry—” I lamented the best I could, breaking off my apology with a shaky intake of air. People liked to apologise whenever bad things happened outside their control for no apparent reason; the Greenhills blamed themselves for their daughter's death all the time.

Mrs Cole wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me away from Mathilda Simmon's broken corpse. “Don't look, my boy,” she told me, but at that moment I already knew.

All I've ever wanted was to _look._

And I didn't even last two days before having to look again. It was too thrilling, too new. I stabbed some tramp in some back alley in Camden, the easy kind of prey that would not be missed or spared a second thought. It was sloppy, impassioned, and absolutely divine. I'd never heard anything more beautiful than the sound of pierced flesh and the last screams of a dying man. I stabbed him until my arm became too numb to stab any more, and each stab and each spray of blood had felt like coming home.

I've always known I was different, but only then did I come to understand just how abnormal were the ways in which I thought and acted, the very way in which I existed. I looked at Maslow's pyramid of needs and saw it crumble. Where was _my_ need, my death drive, my _Todestrieb_? After fifteen years, I finally discovered what lay at my foundation. I could treat it as one would treat a fleshly sickness—call it by its name, define it as a genetic psychopathology of the limbic system—but instead of equalling myself to a sum of neurotransmitters and reducing my Todestrieb to a blunt formula, I became too absorbed in putting it into practice. The once unnamed urge had crystallised itself into something corporeal and demanded an all-too-corporeal outlet. It had evolved into my sole purpose and pleasure, the elusive meaning of life that everyone was always seeking—only to never find it. I had found mine to be taking the lives of others, and the only way to pursue it was to blend in. Avoid consequences. 

I could never belong, but I could construct a fully-dimensional façade of belonging. I trained myself in a wide range of emotions and learnt the subtle signs of non-verbal language. With each smile, I made sure to crinkle the corner of my eyes and arch my lips the most amiable way. I was an actor rehearsing for a role, and I had talent enough to play it flawlessly from beginning to end.

Soon-to-be eighteen, I began plotting to murder the Greenhills for inheritence, but that pleasure was taken from me by natural causes. Mrs Greenhill died of a stroke and Mr Greenhill plunged headlong after his love the day after, swallowing their entire supply of sedatives and heart medication. All the fruit of their hard labour was bequeathed to their adopted son, and they died thinking they were leaving it in good hands. As far as they were concerned, I was the brightest student at school and the most obedient child at home, while my fighting and frequent disappearances they brushed off as storming hormones and adolescent trifles. By choosing to be blind, they allowed me to become who I was meant to become, and I had been a high-functioning master of concealment long before I knew exactly what I was meant to conceal.

At their funeral, when others mourned and bid their goodbyes, I put on my best imitation of 'sorrow' and found it wanting. Of all the emotions I'd learnt how to mimic, sorrow proved itself to be the biggest challenge. I tried and tried to wring out at least one, symbolic tear—but unless something got stuck in my eye, there was no such thing in this world that was capable of making me weep.

With fortune at my disposal, I had a kick-start and made the most of it. I enrolled into Oxford and managed to get my MD in Psychiatry without growing bored of it halfway through. I had found another meaning, another calling, and my career soared only one year after graduation. I had no interest in working at a hospital; apart from occasional consulting, I have put all of my knowledge to use in a private therapeutic practice. The science behind human actions and motivations, previously so mysterious, had finally begun to fall into place—but never quite fit, no. Humans were either painfully predictable or uniquely fascinating, and I have devoted myself to studying the latter. Their struggles, now so much clearer, were something I became keen to examine, especially as they were something I would never come to experience for myself. 

But in spite of being human in only one sense of the word, I am not wholly incapable of emotion—only capable of a much narrower spectrum of emotions on a much shallower level. My anger is feeble yet present; my lust and fascination, though volatile, can grow intense; my pride and vanity can overcome reason. I could even say that through the nature of my studies, I have assimilated myself into human society more than I'd been originally equipped to. I do enjoy levelled discussions with like-minded individuals and might, on occasion, find some of their jokes the littlest bit funny. I am very particular about art and music, and although it does not pull on any invisible (or, should I say, nonexistent) strings within my soul, it pleases my senses and evokes a faint impression of content. And I do, so very much, enjoy moments like these: all alone with my victims, staring them in the face while they stare death in the face, and if this isn't the purest form of joy then I don't know what is. 

They all have the same expression upon jolting awake: utter shock and confusion. Gagged, tied to a chair and wrapped up in a straitjacket, Angelina Dalles comes to consciousness with a short, startled squeal. She notices the string of rope hanging readily above her head—a sinister presage of what's to come—and her squeal spirals at once into a full-blown shriek. The chair wobbles as she squirms against the bindings, and it takes her longer than most to realise it's no use. She looks left, then right, then finally to where I sit half-visible on her examination table—and though it's dark, the street lamps and the headlights of passing cars illuminate the room just enough for me to see the incredulous recognition upon her face.

“Should've picked the loony bin,” I sigh, ignoring her muffled shouts. “Should've picked up your phone. Should've cooperated. I was about to get an order for involuntary hospitalisation, but I've changed my mind and this is what I want to happen to you now. This is what you get when I grow impatient. Everything had been going well until you decided to...” I gesture toward the empty bottle of whisky on her desk. “Well, fall rather spectacularly off the wagon. You admitted patients in here, by the way? Blind drunk for the entire week?” She shoots me an angry glare. “Oh, don't look at me like that. I really hadn't meant for this to happen. Patient suicide is terrible for reputation, and I would've preferred to keep mine spotless.” I chuckle darkly. “That's all you'll be, in the end. Just a stain on my statistics.”

I wait for her to finish screaming unproductively against the gag. No one will hear you, love, just like no one had heard your nephew. Not one passer-by will peek through the window because the panes are tinted and the blare of traffic will drown out your calls for help.

“Not sure if you remember, but you paid me in advance for the next consultation.” I throw my arms wide. “Isn't it nice of me to make a house call? I shall give you one last chance to leave this mortal coil with a sense of absolution.” I stand up and slowly approach her. “Now, why don't we pick up where we left off? It all comes down to the last three years, no? Truly amazing how you managed to live with yourself all this time, by the way. You're almost as good at pretending as I, and that's saying a lot. I'm just curious, Doctor Dalles—considering what you did to your own kin, how did it feel to help strangers? Did it make you feel like a better person, or did it painfully remind you of who you really are? A _monster_ , as you put it?”

I wrench the gag from her mouth, ready to plug it back lest she scream too loud for my liking. The first thing she does is aim to spit in my face, but I am far too experienced to fall for this sort of trick. I take a step aside as she splutters viciously and bellows at me all livid with fury:

“Monster? You're the one to talk, you _psychopath_!"

I wince. “There it is. Us clinicians are all so eager to rush for the diagnosis, aren't we? We can't treat what we can't classify, after all.” I cross my arms. “It's an unwieldy label, and my PCL-R score is only twenty two. I like to think I'm special flavour, you see. I miss some of the marks.”

“You certainly hit the ‘narcissistic’ mark spot on,” she snarls. “Really like the sound of your own voice, don’t you?”

“Don't _you_? Isn't this why you drove all the way to Hampstead every week, just to listen to it?” Her cheeks flush in shame. I link my hands behind my back and take a stroll about her office. “Listen to this, then: I have always thought of people as dogs on a leash. Muzzled by morality, collared by conscience, restrained by the hand of law... a leash without which they become capable of just about anything. Example? Me.”

She shakes her head, failing to see my point. 

“But here's the thing that always amazed me: those with their conscience intact still possess a capacity for evil. When crazed with grief or backed into a corner, all people can become like me. When in the clutches of authority or in the name of ideals, under the right circumstances at the exactly right time, all people are capable of violence. Every dog can go rabid and get off its leash. Example? _You_.” I stab her in the chest with my index finger. She flinches, scandalised with the comparison.

“Let's break it all down, shall we? Instead of tending to a ten-year-old orphan—your very own nephew—who had just seen his parents get pummelled into bloody bits by a speeding lorry, you decided to sell him off to gross old pedos while drinking and gambling for the money you made him earn. You were the last person he had left to rely on, and you betrayed him when he was at his most vulnerable. He could've pulled through with the right support, but you kicked him while he was down and put him through more layers of hell. You made him a scapegoat for your grief because he was the spitting image of his parents, because your world had ended and you wanted to end his too.”

“Stop,” she implores, “please, just stop, I don't want to hear this—”

“How are you any better than me?” I hiss, looming close, grasping the armrests of her chair. “When they slit his throat, your only concern was going to jail. You saved him only to save your own ass, Madame Red, and that's all you ever cared about. Three years ago you became a monster, and no amount of tears or remorse will change that.”

If her hands weren't restrained in the jacket, she'd plug hear ears to drown out the tortuous stream of accusations; but I keep talking, and she has no choice but to listen.

“Is that remorse honest, even? Are you sorry, or do you just want to sleep better at night? In the end, all you ever wanted from me was a pat on the back, the green light to move on. You needed me to justify your cruelty, to explain in smart words why you did what you did because you couldn't handle the truth.”

She slumps in the chair, defenseless against my charges. 

“I suppose I lied, again. I won't give you absolution, I'm no priest. But I can give you the fate I think we both know you deserve.” I grin, pointing at the noose above. It sends her into another fit of fruitless struggles and frenzied screeching. How undignified. Then again, no one ever faces death with dignity; not when I am the one to deliver it, at least.

“Oh, please, do use your last moments for something more constructive. How about you tell me more about your nephew? I'll be taking care of him, remember? I made you designate me his legal guardian in your will?”

All blood drains from her face, and my grin only widens. “How ironic! You’re scared I’ll mistreat him? If it’s any solace before you die, I don't think anyone can hurt him more than you already have. Make no mistake: he'll be better off with a _psychopath_ than his sweet aunt An.”

Ah, now she just won't do anything but cry.

“Come now, work with me. What kind of food does he like, or something. You must know that, at least.”

She sobs unintelligibly under her breath. All I make out is 'honey'.

“Pardon?”

“He likes warm milk with honey,” she raises her voice, plaintive and topped with a hiccup. Snot runs down her chin and oh dear, she really is an ugly crier. “Always had a sweet tooth. His favourite cake is chocolate, I think. R-Rachel used to bake a lot of chocolate cakes when he was little.”

“He’s still little,” I say, ”and because of you, broken.”

She wails louder. “H-his favorite game is chess! He drinks a lot of tea! He's allergic to cats! He doesn’t like to smile but once he does, it feels like the most precious thing in the entire world! He's smart and reads a lot and—” She tries to say something more, but it ends up drowning in a torrent of incoherent blubbering. Have I mentioned undignified? 

“Very good.” I smile my nicest smile. “Time's up.”

I cram the gag into her mouth, climb onto a stool and heave her up from the chair. There's fight left in her still – even with tied ankles she nearly knocks us both over.

“I'll admit, an overdose would’ve been more believable,” I say, heedless of her wild thrashing and screaming. “You are a doctor, after all. Raiding your medicine cabinet... who would've stopped to think twice? But then, where'd be the fun in it for me? No pain and no spectacle.” I smack my lips, looping the noose around her neck. Her entire body stiffens at the taut clinch of scratchy rope; yes, be careful there love, one wrong move and you'll hang. She whimpers like a beat dog and balances unsteadily on top of the chair, her eyes begging me wordlessly for mercy.

Doesn't she realise there's nothing left to hold onto? That her love, fortune and family were irretrievably gone? That three years ago she lost everything, even her very self? That soon she would have ruined her career and wound up a common drunkard? But most of all, doesn't she realise how futile it is to expect mercy from _me_?

I step down and stand savouring her despair for a few more moments. Her neck won't snap at this height, and we both know it all too well, and isn't that the best part of all? I kick the chair back and watch as the rope sinks mercilessly into her throat, silencing the last of her pleas. She writhes inside the straitjacket like a worm on a hook, wheezing for oxygen while her face swells and purples and her eyes bulge out of her head. It takes her over a minute to strangle to death, and I do not miss even a single second. Her minute of excruciating torture was my minute of absolute delight, and I wish it could have lasted longer. Now she paints a gloomy picture, the prettiest I can imagine: swinging lifelessly from the ceiling fan in her quiet clinic, just a grey shape illuminated now and again by the lights of passing vehicles, face tear-stained and anything but peaceful. I circle the room to admire my handiwork, smiling and relishing the last of my afterglow until I revert to the familiar state of un-feeling. 

I take off the straitjacket, pull out the gag and carry back the stool. Then I halt, hand to chin, for a brief while to ponder. No questionable signs of struggle, no indication of a last-moment change of heart. She wanted to die, tied a string of rope and smoothed the passage with liquor. Patient accounts, empty bottles and post-mortem traces of alcohol consumption will neatly tell the story I need. No loose ends, just the inglorious stigma of patient suicide and a few upcoming interviews with the police.

Her secretary will find her first thing in the morning, and from there a long chain of legal procedures will have to ensue and conclude before little Phantomhive can fall finally into my hands. I am impatient, but I have taught myself—among many things—to wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PCL-R - a check-list used to assess psychopathic tendencies, 40 points is max score and 30 means there's a problem (25 in UK I think)


	3. Chapter 3

The crowd is surprising, especially given the sub-zero and biting wind. Doctor Dalles must have been popular, but as I swerve my way between mourners I see no tears and hear only bits of hushed gossip. Really, some people can't even wait until the wake to wag their tongues, how typical.

“...she was never okay after the Phantomhives...”

“...went to see a shrink, drank a lot...”

“...poor boy...”

I put up the collar of my black coat and push forward, mumbling pardons, until I reach the dense front circle surrounding the casket. Under the lush garlands of symbolically red flowers I catch a glimpse of burnished mahogany and gilded handles; the Midfords certainly spared no expense. Next to the yet-empty grave stands a priest, reciting last rites in a voice so monotonous and solemn it makes me want to kick him into the six-foot ditch and drop the coffin on top, so that Miss Dalles has company.

I find all religions preposterous, but Christianity takes the cake—this stale, obsolete doctrine that had no right to persist into the age of empiricism and science, propagating philanthropy and ascetic ideals that go against everything that lies in my nature. It's the religion of lambs who have nothing to uphold their existence save for naive reveries of paradise and Godly grace; the religion of simpletons who need an instruction manual on how to act and think and tell right from wrong; the religion of holier-than-thou hypocrites who flaunt their piety but sin left and right, masquerading themselves as embodiments of virtue. I, for one, would never stoop so low as to conceal my vice with choir-singing or tossing a few pennies into the offering plate every Sunday mass. 

My gaze tears away from the priest, searching. I spot my charge right where I expect to spot him, bunched alongside the Midfords on the opposite end of the circle. He's short for his age and slightly too thin, but far from the brink of malnourishment. All I can see from this angle is the top of his lowered head, and it doesn't lift even once during the entire service; either to hide his absence of sorrow, or to hide from the crowd altogether.

When the fine mahogany coffin makes its final descent into the ground, he doesn't move even a muscle. Only the Midford girl sniffles and sobs a few times into a tissue, the first and the last to give utterance to her grief. I, too, make the effort of seeming sad; I'm presumed to have known the deceased well, after all. I'm the only one who would know the true reason she took her own life. My lips are pursed and slanted as the funeral draws to an end, but inwardly I'm just glad the priest has finally shut up.

The mourners slowly begin to scatter, and I make my way towards the Midfords. Greeting them with a curt nod, I fully intend for it to come across as reluctant. Yes, we've had the dubious pleasure of mutual acquaintance this week. Our heated difference of opinions at the lawyer's means they don't get any of my fake smiles, no.

“Dr Michaelis,” Mrs Midford drawls through clenched teeth at my unwelcome sight. “We didn't see you at the church. Not a religious man, I presume?”

“No, I'm not,” I say, simply, for faith is a minefield I'd rather not cross at the moment. After all, I didn't come here to argue religion or custody; I came here to finally take a look at my prize.

‘You can't judge a book by its cover,’ humans will say in vain attempts to transcend their own pettiness, ‘that's not all there is.’ But covers speak, draw in, and Ciel Phantomhive is a book bound in a cover that immediately catches the eye. He is that one rare gem on the shelf, standing out brilliantly among rows of mediocre. There is a charm both boyish and feminine in his dainty features, and his complexion is of a pale not sickly but noble, blessed with the flawlessness of early youth. Flushing fetchingly in the autumn cold, he looks angelic. Picture-perfect and lovely, in every regard.

I can see why he fetched such a handsome price.

He doesn't look like he might appreciate being patted on the head or pinched on the cheeks, so I extend my palm to greet him as an equal. Already I'm sure he's going to flinch away at the contact—but he's wearing gloves, and the squeeze of his small hand is as firm as he can make it. He keeps his back straight, not hunched; head high, no longer lowered. Truly – no fear of strangers, when so many have hurt him? He has no trouble holding my gaze, alert yet undaunted, returning in kind all of my scrutiny. And how arresting would be that gaze, if only his violet eye could compliment the lone blue! I find no traces of sadness in that eye, and not a smidgen of fright or even shyness; but I do see curiosity, something that might be hauteur, and more than a glimmer of intellect that lay within.

It's not what I'd expected. I had more to go by than just the cover, more than the depthless testimony of the external. With all my knowledge, I had expected to find the cover falling apart at the seams: tattered, dilapidated, in urgent need of a mend. No one has looked at this boy and thought there was something wrong with him because the boy does not look like there is anything wrong with him in the least. In fact, he looks the exact opposite: both healthy and sane, sharp and collected, well-dressed and well-fed. True that half his face is covered with an eye-patch, but accidents happen all the time. He looks every bit the rich, spoiled child he once had been – not the tortured, neglected orphan I was sure he'd become.

It's been a long time since I've been misled in this manner. I can deduce a great deal from appearances, but they do tend to deceive and people are not always what they seem. I don't quite seem like I fancy murdering people for sport either, now do I? He must be a fellow master of concealment. Well met, well met.

“We haven't been introduced. I'm Sebastian Michaelis, your aunt's therapist. She appointed me as your legal guardian—”

“Not while we still have a say in it,” a cold voice interrupts whatever exchange may have followed. I narrow and lift my gaze, colliding it with Mrs Midford's. Ah, _her_. I'm used to women practically eating out of my hand, but this specimen seemed entirely immune to my charms and manipulations.

“I was actually about to contact you in this matter, Doctor. We have decided to contest the will.”

Oh, dear Mrs Midford, on what basis? Need you honestly make such a fuss? I'll poke some and prod some at your darling little nephew and then you can have him back—in what condition remains to be seen, but have him back you shall. Sooner rather than later I will thrust him right into your welcoming arms, for my interest only lasts so long. 

I give a stern frown. “Perhaps we could discuss this at a more appropriate place and moment?”

Her voice only grows in volume. “We wouldn’t be needing to discuss this at all, Doctor, if only you had a shred of decency and relinquished custody to the child’s own family!”

A couple of heads turn our way and oh, I see what she's doing, raising a ruckus at a funeral, I see what this is all about. Sure, I'll bite. 

“I don't think you're the right person to speak of decency, Mrs Midford, considering you can't behave at a funeral.”

“And tell me, what could a single man in his thirties possibly want with a stranger’s child? How's _that_ for decency?”

Ah, now that is one foul move, well played. She deliberately laces the question with perverse undertones, knowing that everyone within earshot will stop to ask themselves the same: what _could_ I want with him, indeed? The woman is a formidable opponent, I'll give her this much.

Her words annoy me for two reasons: one, I have turned thirty only last month. Second, the idea that I should be married is completely absurd. See here, I had put a great deal of thought into creating a viable social identity, and marrying just to avoid suspicion would have been both cumbersome and unwise. Rich, handsome, intelligent... and on top of everything, happily married? People aren't perfect, and I decided that Sebastian Michaelis was in need of distinct commitment issues and a history of failed relationships to match. Whenever asked about my love life, I made sure to always have an armful of deft excuses at the ready. 'It just never seemed to work out, maybe I'm too picky'. 'They’re all scared I’ll psychoanalyse them, or something'. 'I’m a workaholic, and no one likes to have second priority'. All I needed to do was recite one of the above with a suitably doleful expression _et voilà_ , I had my interlocutors nodding their heads in grave understanding. 'Yes, everyone has problems of their own, of course.' I'll have you know, Mrs Midford, it all had been carefully planned; like most of the things I do, which sadly means you were bound to lose from the start. 

Still, a good attempt at slander is not bad. In today's society, even the slightest hint of deviant inclinations can smear one's good name for life. Were it anyone else faced publicly with akin accusation, I believe they would lose their mind. They would sweat, they would bristle, they would stutter and flail their hands indignantly around. And the harder we deny something, the worse it looks. I don't have that problem; no matter what happens, I'm always as still as a stone. Even if I were to stand accused of all my murders right here and right now, I would hardly bat an eye. If a chasm opened beneath my feet to swallow everything up, I wouldn't breathe so much as a word.

“I'm going to pretend I have no idea what you meant to insinuate, Mrs Midford,” I grind out, cold as ice. “Angelina wasn't a stranger. I cared for her as a patient and, within professional boundaries, equally as a friend. I can assure you that her decision was not without good reason or made on a whim.” 

Mrs Midford opens her mouth to interrupt me, but I raise my hand to make clear I'm not done. Her husband keeps looking back and forth between the two of us, well aware that he should try taming his wife yet evidently terrified to get in her way. It's obvious who calls the shots in their marriage.

“Take no offense, but you have also been absent for the greater part of Ciel's life, and family is more than just blood. We both might as well be strangers to him, but as a psychiatrist I have an understanding of his condition that you do not—”

“Then kindly _explain_ —”

“—and he requires special care that you simply cannot provide, not while running two companies and already raising two children.”

I have done my research: after Vincent and Rachel Phantomhive's sudden decease, the ownership of their Funtom company went straight to the Midfords. They tried managing it from France for a time, but were recently forced to move back to London. Truly, they have their hands full for the moment. 

“What a nerve! You think you know everything about us? You have no right to meddle in our affairs!”

“And you have no right to imply obscenities or contest a perfectly valid act of last will. Be my guest, however, if you wish to waste more time in court.”

Mr Midford wrings his hands in utter helplessness. Mrs Midford looks like she's about to punch me, but it's not her husband who ultimately stops her from giving me another piece of her mind (or fist). It falls down to Ciel, standing forgotten between two adults arguing his well-being, to rebuke his aunt for causing a scene in front of a funeral crowd. It is said that children should be seen and not heard, and yet it's no other voice than his – calm, smooth, magisterial – that somehow becomes the final say in the matter. Like the elder head of a family, silent throughout the entire exchange, he breaks off the dispute and announces his verdict:

“Please, aunt Frances, enough. It'll be fine, really. I'll visit.”

Welcome, little Phantomhive: out of the frying pan, into the fire.


	4. Chapter 4

“So what's this I hear about you having a kid, now?”

“Long story short: yes, I have a kid now.”

“What, raising a patient's brat! Are you off your rocker?”

“Like I said, long story.”

“Were you two shagging? You were shagging, weren't you? And she bloody killed herself and now you feel guilty—is that your long story?”

The benefits of social life? Good cover. Appearances of normal. The downsides of social life? Ronald Knox. Gossip. Guys' nights out, the lot.

“Right, me and my long stories. You want to hear the ones I could tell about _you_? To either of your three girlfriends?”

“I'm hanging up on you, bye.”

I scoff and slide the phone back into my pocket. Ciel's gone inside on his own; if I smoked, I would light one of my Lucky Strikes or Marlboros and lean nonchalantly against the hood of my car. Like Angelina Dalles, I would pull long draughts of smoke into my lungs and exhale slowly, contemplatively, as I stood waiting in front of her pretty white townhouse in Earl's Court. But I don't smoke, and Ciel's out the door within six minutes; I would have scarcely had time to enjoy my cigarette, anyway.

I eye the small, black suitcase he's carrying down the stairs. He didn't bring a lot from the Midfords, either. “Is that all?”

He shrugs. “There used to be a lot of good silver and pricey artwork in the house, but my aunt blew everything in Chinatown. Sorry.”

I can't tell if he's joking. Other people hint at sarcasm with smirks and raised brows, but Ciel Phantomhive remains a big blank canvas. Would he joke about his dead aunt's gambling habit that ruined both their lives? I can't seem to figure him out. Then again, isn't this precisely the point?

“Suppose we won't be needing a moving truck, then,” I assert good-humouredly, loading the suitcase inside the boot of my Aston Martin—flashy, but not half as flashy as all the Ferraris and Lamborghinis you see rich kids flaunting around the streets. It's the classy kind of flashy, with polished black varnish and elegant curves. Starting the engine, I spare a last glance at the row of terraced buildings by the street. Furnished and complete with a glum past, the house shall sell for a pretty sum even without its paintings and silvers. Once the little Phantomhive comes of age, he's going to inherit a colossal fortune after all his dead relatives; shame, though, that money would never buy him back happiness.

We barely hit the first turn when I honk at a silver Toyota and Ciel decides to start a conversation. I thought he'd sit brooding silently all the way to Hampstead, but my predictions kept proving wrong.

“Why are you named after a French inquisitor?” 

Ah, he must have googled me. I do hope he enjoyed scrolling through my professional achievements, flattering photos and laudatory patient reviews.

“Maybe I’m not. Michaelis is more commonly a German surname, and Sebastian could be a mere coincidence.”

“You don’t know whether your own roots are German or French?”

“I was raised in a children's home. I don’t know anything about my biological parents, nor did I care enough to find out.”

“Mhm,” he hums out his disinterest, gazing at the bustling streets outside. So then my sad childhood did not make much of an impression? No sympathy for a fellow orphan? Oh, so cold. 

I stop to let a bunch of teenagers through the crossing. Not much older than Ciel, dressed in baggy jeans and Nike shoes and preposterous rapper caps. I glance to my left and picture the boy in a similar attire – bomber jacket instead of his well-cut coat, oversized T-shirt instead of a turtle-neck jumper, low-crotch joggers instead of tight-fitted, woollen trousers – and it's ridiculous enough to make me want to snicker under my breath. 

“I thought you'd be more opposed to the idea of coming with me,” I say, changing the radio station once the news are over. I cannot abide modern music.

“Hmm? Oh, anything but the Midfords. They mean well, just fuss too much. I barely got a moment's peace the entire month, especially with Elizabeth around. I figured it would be easier to deal with one shrink trying to poke inside my head than a whole bunch of persistent relatives trying to do the same.”

Ah—someone fancies himself independent. After all, he has survived three years without drawing unwanted attention. He must loathe the fact I know his deepest, darkest secrets while all he knows is a bunch of flat trivia from Google.

“Is that what you think this is about? Poking?”

“Why else wouldn't you have called the social services on my aunt? Why wouldn't you let them handle my _special care_?”

“After the lengths you've gone to in order to keep it secret? I figured you didn't want their kind of help.”

He blows air through his nose. “And then figured I'd want yours, instead?”

“Not want but prefer—and _need_ , more than anything else. People tend to pay a lot for my kind of help, and I don't fuss nearly as much. Promise.” 

My eyes stay trained on the road, but I think the corner of his mouth twirls upward just a little bit at that. 

“I thought a therapist should be a neutral party, however. Isn't it unethical to treat acquaintances and family?” 

“Yes, but for the moment we are neither—closer to flatmates than anything, really—and in your case, no therapist is ever going to remain neutral. There's bound to be emotional involvement and conflict of interest one way or the other.”

“Fussing, you mean.” He sighs. “Oh well. You were right, I don't dislike this arrangement. At least there's going to be more room to avoid you than at my aunt's.”

I can't tell if that's a joke either, so I make no comment. We roll slowly into Hampstead, and Ciel was right about one thing: there's plenty of room to hide. I live in a large, detached house surrounded by lush greenery and tall fence, the kind of house that has the less successful among Londoners muttering 'filthy rich bastard' under their breaths. The interior is furnished in a rich, dark palette interwoven with luminous beiges—classic Victorian design with upscale woodwork, patterned tiles and handmade rugs; coffered ceilings, prized paintings and grand, split stairs with intricate banisters; antique chairs, canapés and ottomans with plush upholstery and stacks of velvet pillows; sconces, lampshades and elaborate chandeliers that shed the warmest light in the evenings. In short, I am a filthy rich bastard. 

Pulling up under the carport, I remember the first time I arrived at the Greenhills'. I remember their tired, tentative smiles and awkward gestures, all touch-and-go for the first couple of days. Lumped together into a caricature of a family, we were quick to fall into a mutually beneficial rhythm of pretending that all was always well. Our idea of playing house was leaving each other alone.

Ciel, however, doesn't have my kind of luck. I shall leave him alone for one week only: let him settle, get comfortable, test the waters. But afterwards, he should prepare himself not for mere poking but a full vivisection.

“Welcome back, Mr Sebastian!” Mey-Rin chirps in greeting as we enter the foyer. She comes to clean the house twice a week, but I'll wager she'd be content to do so every day. She has red hair, thick-lensed glasses and a hopeless, all-too-obvious crush on myself.

She bends down to address Ciel, her voice dripping with puerile sweetness, “And hello there, young man! My, you are beyond adorable!” Her face falls once she takes all of him in. “But whatever's happened to your eye?”

“I tripped and fell on a spiked railing,” says Ciel in a bland, bored voice. It's a question he must have answered a thousand times.

“Why, you poor thing!” she bewails, grasping at her cheeks. She has a penchant for melodrama. “Come, come, Mr Sebastian is busy, I'll show you to your room!”

He looks to me; I look meaningfully to my right, where stand open the double-winged doors to my study. “We start next week. One hour at a time. Is that all right with you?”

He doesn't even manage to nod before Mey-Rin starts dragging him up the stairs, chattering happily how glad she is for him to be here and how kind Mr Sebastian is for taking him in. 

Very kind, indeed. 


	5. Chapter 5

It takes two flights of stairs to reach the first door, a long corridor to reach another, then a sharp right turn to finally reach the entrance. In spite of the 'no smoking' sticker, the air inside smells of cigarettes and the booth seats have round holes burnt into their worn black leather.

Dim lights flicker over the silhouettes of an early-night crowd, fluctuating between different shades of blue and purple and sometimes pink. The music blares loud enough to dance yet low enough for conversation, and there is only one type of conversation to be had in a place like this: in the dark corners, on the stuffy dancefloor, by the neon-lit bar.

Bard lets out a whistle. “Looking to get lucky? Didn't have you figured for the kind of bloke to pick a joint like that.”

That's because I'm not that kind of bloke in the least. But I can hardly tell a detective from the HSCC that I came here to spy on my next kill, now can I? I shouldn't show myself publicly in the same place as my victims, but the past week has left me restless. All I need is one look.

“Please. That wanker would get lucky anywhere,” Ronald snorts, scanning the area. “Let's see. Pint's cheap, going once... oh, and would you look at that blonde by the bar! Long _long_ legs." He grins. "Going twice, I'm sold.”

They get their cheap beers, I get a glass of passable cognac. The bartender checks out my wristwatch with certain skepticism, as though he couldn't figure out the reason a bloke like me would come to a joint like that, either. Judging by the clientele, it's the kind of joint for overworked middle class looking to forget about failed relationships and mortgage. Bard is the only one of us who fits the profile, forever drowning in his parents' old debts, making ends meet only by incurring new debts and abusing himself with overtime hours. Ronald earns well into six figures, but he hoards it like a dragon hoards its loot; the only money he doesn't hold back from spending is mine.

“So how's that brat of yours coming along?” he asks as soon as we slide into a free booth, appraising the blonde's rear from every angle.

We're still testing the waters, thank you for asking. Ciel shows himself only for meals, dodging all attempts at dialogue and trying not to give away how much he likes my cooking. He insists on calling me 'Doctor' (sometimes with 'Michaelis' at the end), drawing a clear line to our relationship and refusing to cross it by even an inch. He's not fearful, just distant; the way an introvert chooses to be distant and feels perfectly comfortable with staying away. His silence is not bashful but condescending, as though he couldn't be bothered to waste breath on my irrelevant self unless he absolutely had to—and he _will_ have to, one hour every week. Soon.

In the meantime, I have interviewed all of his teachers only to hear the same manner of praise spoken in a variety of eloquent ways. How literate he is, how wonderfully smart, how trouble-free and well-mannered despite everything he'd been through. I was particularly curious to hear from his PE teacher, but Ciel has been discharged from PE until graduation. His aunt claimed he'd suffered a contusion during the accident, and her word as a doctor was not brought into question. Only his mathematician had something unusual to say, peering seriously through a pair of rimless glasses as he pulled me aside for a confidential word:

“Good of you to take him in, Doctor. I always thought there was something off about Phantomhive, if you catch my meaning. Too clever for his own good, if you ask me, and always nose-deep in one book or another. Call me mad, but how is that normal? He's thirteen, for Christ's sake. I've never seen him run around the corridors, laugh with the other kids, and just... _be_ a kid, is what I'm trying to say.” 

I haven't, either. I do see him spending each afternoon in my library, devouring sweets and rapidly drinking through my supplies of Earl Grey. Perhaps his childishness resides in the way he devours sweets, for it most certainly does not reside in the kind of lectures he picks to hone his mind. Only yesterday I caught him consulting a heavy textbook of physics much too advanced for secondary school syllabus; the day before that, I peeked inside as he sat immersed in the works of Heidegger and Nietzsche with a look of plausible interest upon his face. A discussion about German philosophy and atheism wasn't exactly the kind of discussion I had aimed to ensue between the two of us, but I do think it helped us break the overdue ice. When afternoon bled into evening and still our words weren't exhausted, he seemed surprised by how much time had flown by without him taking notice—by how much breath he'd wasted on my irrelevant self.

“We are alike, in a way. We were both raised by books," I told him, getting up to prepare late dinner. The key to bonding was, after all, common tongue. Similarities.

And all things considered, I think he was coming along just fine. 

“That _brat_ is actually more mature than you," I answer Ronald, taking a sip of cognac. "And less of a pain in the arse.”

He would bite back, I'm sure, but the long-legged blonde starts making her way across the dancefloor and he's busy trailing every movement of her shapely hips.

I don't see what he sees. Looking at her full mouth, flawless make-up and hourglass figure, I see only transparent beauty. My lust, like my interest, is highly selective, and she does not merit even a spark.

For some reason, I recall the peculiar glint in Ciel's eye when I told him we were alike, and the graceful way he lifted the porcelain teacup to his mouth. 

“And _of course_ she's into Dr Sebastian. Who else? You make an awful wingman, mate,” Ronald bemoans, noticing how the blonde keeps stealing obvious glances in my direction. My own glance darts past the blonde, across the bar, to the lone figure leaned against the counter. I see his dark profile, hunched shoulders and scruffy chin. He hasn't made a move, not yet. He too sips the cheap beer, aiming to appear casual—just a regular bloke looking for a regular Saturday hook-up—but he can't very well hide that distinct, predatory air about his person, not from me. It takes one to know one.

I wonder if he's already marked his prey, I wonder what drives him most to it. The hunger for dominance? The need to fulfil eccentric sexual desires? Deeply-rooted misogyny, perhaps the by-product of trauma? 'Mummy didn't love me so I take out my unresolved anger and abandonment issues on innocent women that may or may not look like mummy'?

My phone—the _other_ phone—vibrates in double bursts against my thigh. _“I've got this from here, Sebby_ , _”_ I read the message, _“just gimme a heads up~”_

Exactly on time.

“Pardon, sir, are we boring you?” Ronald's amused voice summons me back to reality. I glance up from the screen and flash him a half-apologetic, half-snarky smile. Yes, you are boring me – with your tedious problems and unremarkable selves – a great deal, in fact. Maintaining public appearances can get tiresome, especially when my idea of fun deviates so significantly from the average set of social activities. Beer, inane talk and ogling every female in the perimeter does not happen to fit the bill. 

But at least I know one of London's top lawyers, and at least I have an inside man in the MPS.

“Sorry, my patient's texting me,” I lie smoothly as ever, “she's going through some hard times.”

“Let me guess: _long story_?” Ronald wiggles his brows. “You should get yourself a secretary, by the by, like any self-respecting shrink. 'Dr Michaelis is currently too busy having a pint to give a shit about your crippling depression, please bother him on a more convenient occasion.' Would that be so hard?”

Yes, it would. Doing what I do, the last thing I need is someone knowing my entire schedule.

After another round of drinks and pointless banter, Ronald disappears to stake his claim on a different blonde while Bard goes outside for a fag, respecting the 'no smoking' sticker when no one else could be bothered.

I am left alone, no cognac, waiting for the idle predator to begin his hunt, well-conscious of the long-legged blonde's increasingly bold efforts to catch my eye. She arches her body in the most provocative ways, closer and closer still to my table, whipping her hair to the rhythmic beats of club music. 

Such easy, pathetic prey. What value holds what is practically shoved in our faces? None, but it doesn't mean I cannot have a little fun. My eyes meet the blonde's come-hither look and my lips stretch into that beckoning, beguiling smile that few have been able to resist. She slumps into my seat, at once ensnared, filling my nostrils with sweet perfume and minty breath.

“Name's Emily,” she says, as if I'm supposed to care. I sneak a hand under her skirt, no greeting, and slide it far up her bare thigh. She didn't bother with pantyhose, but at least she remembered to wear lingerie.

Her breasts flatten against my shoulder and her warm hand ghosts around my collar, undoing another button before slipping past the placket of my shirt. I lean close, as if to share a secret, tucking a lock of blonde hair behind her ear.

“What a simple creature you are, Emily,” I rumble, playing with her heart-shaped earring. “Is this how you determine your self-worth? By the men you manage to bait with your shallow looks? Or maybe you're one of those emancipated women who embrace their sexuality regardless of social stigma? No, you don't look like you have much in the way of beliefs or values. Sex is simply all you can offer, is that not right? Single-purpose goods only.”

She has enough dignity to scramble from my lap and take a bold swing at my cheek. I catch her wrist before the slap connects with my face, and squeeze. Hard.

I want to wring and pull her arm, grab a fistful of that shiny hair and bang her head against the table until I knock out all of her whitened, even teeth. I want to watch them roll and skip across the parquet like little bloody stones, and then I want to smash my empty cognac glass and saw her throat wide open with the biggest, sharpest shard.

But there would be consequences, and I have to let her go. My fingers leave only a white-red imprint on her cosmetically tanned skin.

“Psycho!” she hisses, rubbing her wrist as she stomps through the dancefloor toward the bar: from one predator, to another. She flings herself at the first man who offers to buy her a drink, falling without foreplay into his primitive trap. Such easy, pathetic prey.

I know she will end up drugged, robbed and brutally raped tonight. Only I see the pill he drops into her Margarita with a swift movement of a practised hand, but I don't rush to her rescue. 

Some other night, after I've gathered enough evidence, I plan to follow him out from yet another seedy joint and deliver what the media has called 'self-appointed justice'. I haven't figured out how, yet; it depends on my mood. No one really knows what they will want to have for next week's dinner, either. 

“ _Heads up_ ,” I type as they make their way to the exit. 'There's always a bigger fish', goes a certain saying. And it's true, there is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HSCC - Homicide and Serious Crime Command  
> I have zero idea about the structure of London police, so I'm just going to leave things very vague in that department ^^'


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it took me a while, but Seb and Ciel properly interact with each other in this chapter XD

“Murder is evil,” LondonVigilante11 states in his first sentence. “The heaviest sin committed by mankind. The ultimate crime with the ultimate trial. Banned by Ten Commandments, banned by law, banned by reason. It is a fact – incontestable, set in stone – like Earth being round is a fact, or cigarettes being bad for your health. No one needs scientific proof to know it is wrong to kill, nor does anyone need to be explained why. But there are always people like me, the margin, the rare few who dare contest the incontestable. I think: maybe it is not a fact, unchangeable and absolute. Maybe it is merely a truth, a principle that can be moulded and regarded from different perspectives. Like a theory, like philosophy, up for debate. Maybe my truth can be different. Maybe it can be an opinion, a personal belief. Is everyone not entitled to their own? Some views are simply more controversial, some truths are harder to accept. In times when natural selection is scarce and our numbers only rise, when the weak are kept breathing by medicine and the wicked left alive due to flawed concepts of _humane_ and _moral_ … is it truly wrong to pluck rotten apples off a tree? Is it all black and white or can it be shades of grey? Who can honestly, without any shadow of doubt, testify that what I'm doing is pure evil?”

It stops there, provoking dispute. 488 comments. I drum my fingers on the surface of my desk and take a long sip of coffee. The post reads like a load of pseudo-philosophical drivel, but it does stand out among the biblical sermons and poor attempts at provocation. If I felt like my actions needed to be justified, wouldn't I likewise elevate my judgment above the common grey mass and preach survival of the fittest? Perhaps it is exactly the sort of perspective I sought to evaluate with my experiment—but skimming through it for the second time, I can just imagine who wrote it. One of those misunderstood, self-proclaimed intellectuals perpetuating the delusion of personal superiority, sneering at everyone's oh-so-narrowed mindset while convincing themselves to be one of the few conscious human beings in a world full of sheep. Some teenage outcast, I'm willing to bet, with a taste toward sadism and sick pornography, that one quiet misfit in every school secretly wanting everyone dead. Anonymously behind a computer screen, he can write whatever he wants and pretend to be absolutely whomever; like London's most wanted killer at large, for instance, who has been making all the recent headlines with his gruesome methods of punishing criminals.

But only I would know that London's most wanted killer is not the kind to write posts on the Internet, nor the kind to convince anyone that he's not evil. I know he doesn't kill criminals for the sake of a 'better world', or in the name of 'self-appointed justice' – he simply wants to see what will happen. It's his tool for measuring human morality, that nebulous notion altering with circumstance and escaping predictions.

Psychologists do love their experiments, after all. It is with unbridled interest that I track every smallest development on my matter: news coverage, forum discussions, newspaper articles and radio auditions. Thus far, media outrage has been unequivocal and LondonVigilante11's mental diarrhea might just be the most compelling point of view I've yet encountered. How unspeakably disappointing. 

I begin to scroll through the 488 comments, at first glance just as ridiculous, when I hear a tap on the door and lift my gaze from the screen. 

“You said one o'clock. It's one o'clock.”

I smile, shut my laptop, down the rest of coffee and gesture to my sofa. Ciel sits himself comfortably, with confidence, perhaps even a degree of defiance. “I’m not scared of your tricks,” says his posture, “bring it on.” No uneasy shifting, no twiddling thumbs, no jiggling feet. He carries himself with certain nobility, overall, as though he were a member of the royal family forced to live among peasants (and yes, I'm definitely one of the peasants).

“Would you mind being recorded?” 

“You record your patients?” he says with a little frown, and for once I can tell exactly what's going through his mind. _Did you record my aunt? Why did she kill herself after three years?_

“Usually. But you're not my usual patient.” 

“Do as you like. It's all the same to me.”

I nod, arming myself with pen and paper. I'm not particularly excited; psychotherapy is a gradual, complex process which requires the dubious pleasure of routine interviewing, and there is little else I can do on our first session. One does not want to immediately plunge into depths; when it comes to the human mind, one must submerge steadily to avoid shock and scour the shallows to avoid losing foothold. I need to get the bigger picture, wade through mundane issues before focusing on what interests me the most.

On the demons he tries so bad to keep at bay. 

I take my usual seat, cross my legs in my usual manner and ask my usual questions. Summarise your average day and mood; tell me about school and friends and teachers; describe your relationship with the Midfords and your plans for the future. If he's to feel comfortable talking to me about what happened three years ago, he must first become comfortable talking about trivialities.

Meanwhile he's listless like a police officer answering pesky journalists at a press conference he was forced to attend: poker face, no further input, clever evasions. Therapy is meant to be a joint commitment, and patients are meant to come see me of their own volition. With Ciel, I clearly need to seize all initiative; a little bit like courtship, I suppose, where he's playing hard to get.

“Before we finish up for today, I would like to ask you about last week. How do you feel, living here? Is there anything you find disagreeable?”

“No complaints. I like your library. Mr Tanaka is nice. Except...” He leans against his palm, regarding me with the air of a ruler passing judgement from his lofty throne. “Yes, except yourself. Disagreeable, that is. I don't really like you, if that's what you wanted to know.”

Now _there's_ a sentence I don't hear often. Just when I thought we'd bonded over Nietzsche, too! Oh, so cold. Off with my head.

“Can you tell me why that is?”

“Simple: you’re _too_ likeable. There's something off about that.”

I cannot disagree. Perfect people seem false and intimidating, which is why my artificially constructed public persona included weaknesses and flaws. My colleagues gossip about my chronic self-prescriptions, hopeless relationship issues and the alleged abandonment syndrome I had developed in the children's home. I make sure to act troubled, tired, on occasion even rude – human, plainly, and I have a profound theoretical understanding of what it means to be human. Even fellow psychiatrists—esteemed professors, experts on the human mind—haven't been able to uncover my true nature. What priceless irony! Even if they do suspect that what they see every day is a mask, they don’t know what the mask truly hides. They think it hides a lonely addict – a relatable figure in the grey, modern world – but not a psychopathic killer, a figure inspiring decidedly less compassion than the former.

To Ciel, however, I have been nothing but perfect.

“I'm _too_ likeable?”

“Just so. Everything you do is engineered to make me like you. It's all part of your ploy to see whether or not I'm still capable of affection, isn't it? That is why you make all those obscenely delicious desserts, feign interest in my reading and smile that _creepy smile_ —”

He pauses, seeing me write something down. ‘Trust issues confirmed,’ says my note in fine print. 

“I feel like you may be interpreting my every word and gesture through the prism of your expectations, which are expectations of hostility and ulterior motives. It's your way of protecting yourself from potential harm.”

“So all this is out of the sheer goodness of your heart?”

“Do you find it so hard to believe?”

His lips stretch in a sardonic grin. “In the goodness of people's hearts? Yes, I do tend to be a little skeptical.” 

I nod with understanding, but not with compassion. He doesn't want that. “Healthy skepticism is advisable, but it does pay off to give people the benefit of the doubt. I know why it's difficult for you to take things at face value, but caring for your well-being is my duty as your legal guardian." I try a smile, even if he thinks it's creepy. "And believe it or not, I happen to be quite fond of that duty. The least I can do for you is bake a cake."

“Ha. You're just keeping your guinea pig well-fed.”

“Ciel, I want to help you.”

“You want to dissect me.”

“Dissect _in order_ to help.”

“No; dissect, pick at the pieces and take notes.”

I add the word ‘severe’ before ‘trust issues’. I could also add ‘justified’. ‘Completely reasonable given the circumstances’. Also, ‘surprising bluntness’ and ‘flawless cognitive function’. Ciel ogles the movements of my pen with blatant animosity. ‘Fear of being known/analysed’, therefore. I can almost hear the grating of his teeth. 

“Does that mean you won't cooperate in therapy?”

“No, don't misunderstand; I just answered your question. For the sake of obscenely delicious desserts? Of course, have at it, dissect me all you want. Or, well, try to.” He makes a flippant gesture with his hand, again with that courtly manner. “Just please, don't feed me this nonsense about fondness and caring and what have you, hmm? You don't want to help me out of altruism, you want to see if you can fix me. I'm a challenge to your skills, a rare case to study and write about in research papers. Your little pet project, essentially, so why don't we just leave all that in the open? Isn't the idea to be honest?”

Ah. You want honesty, don't you? Just how honest will _you_ be, I wonder, when I make you talk about everything they did to you behind closed doors? About your dead parents and dead, dearly missed aunt? Now, I may not be honest, but neither are you. Always trying to play cool, pretending it doesn't affect you... is this how you cope? You distance yourself from the horrors of your past and act like they don't haunt your present? But I bet it gnaws at you plenty, it does. Your demons devour you from the inside out while you hide behind your books and teacups to silence their mad howling in your ears. But you can never forget; all your suffering has been branded into the sensitive tissue of your ten-year-old brain and your scars retell the story every time you look in the mirror. ‘That which does not kill us makes us stronger,’ Nietzsche famously said, and you must agree with him, but I don't. Your strength is but a stylish defense mechanism, reaction formation, a neatly fabricated façade—and if you think the walls around you are impenetrable, think again. The walls you put up are made from cardboard and the smallest breeze can blow them right down. The fort you so laboriously erected is bound to cave in on itself and bury you underneath its crushing weight. I know a thing or two about false fronts, and I know that hiding behind that icy grandeur is just a tiny, frightened child. That's really all you are, little one, and I will prove that. 

But I don't say any of it, I can't, not yet. I have to bite my tongue. Consequences, bonding, bigger picture... the lot.

“It's past two. Same time next week?”

I sigh. “Yes, thank you.”

As he walks out, I'm left staring at my sparse notes. I tap my pen against the paper; thinking, considering.

‘Cheeky brat,’ I write on the bottom of the page. And then I underline it, twice.


	7. Chapter 7

I am unsure why he chose to forgo his isolation. He accompanies me to town, humours me with conversation at dinner and goes so far as to ask my opinion on a variety of matters. I can finally feel his presence, but not in the same sense a child's presence is usually felt – not as a boisterous, attention-seeking nuisance – but as uniquely engaging company, pleasant on the eyes and ears. I continue to be amazed (to my limited extent, of course) by how shrewd and educated he proves at thirteen; his mind, lonely in its precocious ingenuity, seems to thrive during the evenings we spend talking in the library, exchanging views over late tea and dessert. And as we do so, from the corner of my eye, I can see him studying me closely and assiduously, even though he knows that I know that he's watching.

I play along, it's mutual.

As we pull up on the driveway, returning from an errand in Knightsbridge, I see an all-too-familiar and uninvited figure seated casually upon my front stairs. So he’s cracked the gate code _again_. There he is, such an eyesore with his tattered red coat and greasy red hair reaching all the way to his hips. Usually he primps himself like a teenage girl for prom, and the fact that he hasn't can only mean he's run out of money. If he's run out of money, it means he's on withdrawal. And during withdrawal, he gets unpredictable. Dangerous. Unhinged.

'Unhinged' is not the ideal state for him to learn about Ciel.

“Sebby my darling!” Grell sings happily as soon as I open the door of my car. His bright green eyes are puffed and bloodshot, pale skin even paler, hands trembling and nose running—but he still graces me with a wide, Cheshire-Cat grin that displays his row of rotting teeth in all their foul glory.

As a clinician, I am careful with employing the word 'deranged'. Crass and ambiguous, it's the term uneducated people use whenever something is wrong with someone and they cannot tell exactly what. And there's plenty wrong with Grell Sutcliff, even to the point where I, myself, might feel compelled to call him 'deranged'. He is a textbook example of borderline personality disorder, exhibiting a full set of symptoms such as impulsivity, unpredictable mood swings, substance abuse and chronic self-harm (in his case, over-dramatised suicide attempts meant only to induce compassion).

His broad grin falters as another, unexpected figure climbs out of my car. He adjusts his lopsided spectacles and grimly demands:

“What the shit, Sebastian? Who's the brat, huh?” 

“He lives here. _You_ don't. Get off my property.”

I takes him but a second to go from ecstatic to enraged. “He yours?? You knocked up some fucking cunt in college, is that it??”

“Calm down. I'm just his adoptive parent.”

“Why the fuck would you adopt some brat! Hey, come here!” he shouts at Ciel, who ignores him and keeps walking calmly up the stairs. “I saw the way you looked me up, punk, judging me like you're better!” He leaps over to block his path, grabbing him roughly by the chin to get a look at his face. “Huh? What's with the pirate eye?”

Red alert, I should intervene. I should but I don't, overridden by a spur of curiosity. I want to see what Ciel will do, and what he does is slap Grell's hand away – loud, impetuous, sudden – making him reel backwards on top of the stairs.

“I lost it in a car accident,” he snarls, face darkening. So he does _not_ like to be touched, after all. Or does it only apply to deranged junkies? I've never seen him angry and his anger is not the petulant fussing of harmless little boys; it's hateful and direly authentic. 

Grell shuts up, letting him disappear inside the house. “Feisty. I don't like him,” he says, reverting right back to his usual, over-expressive self. On and off.

I cross my arms. “I thought I told you to give me a ring, not just stumble by whenever you feel like it. I have patients, you lamebrained degenerate, I can't be seen with the likes of you.”

“Why, can't you see it's an emergency! I got robbed and I'm _dying_.” He sniffles and rubs his reddened nose. I can smell his sour sweat.

With a sigh I reach to withdraw my lambskin wallet. I am prepared for emergencies.

“You know where this goes," I say, handing him the key to my safe deposit box. "I left you ten thousand inside. Have it last at least two months this time, will you?”

“Aww, you shouldn't have!” Grell beams, snatching the key. “Such a gentleman, taking good care of his lady!”

Have I mentioned gender dysphoria? 

“I have something nice for you too!” he says, fumbling inside his bag to retrieve a compact, superzoom camera. He turns on the photo display and releases a fit of raspy coughs as he hands it over, granting me a solid whiff of his bad breath.

It's all there: five girls raped in the very same room, tied and beaten and knocked unconscious. I stop at the shot of Emily, blonde hair bloody and tangled, smooth legs high in the air. I can even see her little heart-shaped earring. 

“Good job,” I say. While he may not be the most becoming accomplice, his street smarts largely make up for his obnoxiousness—combined, of course, with his unmatched devotion to one such as myself, and he knows exactly who I am and what I do because I told him. Yes, I have entrusted a borderline junkie with the secret of my Todestrieb.

First of all, I am his only stable source of drug money (and he uses whatever he can get his hands on, with a special taste for heroin and speed). Secondly, I have helped him clean up a few murders of his own. Lastly – need I mention the hopeless, zealous crush he has on myself? His infatuation with me is one of the few constants in the mercurial chaos that is his life, and he would sooner finish one of his tragicomic suicide attempts than sell me out. And even if he tried to, who would believe a derelict drug addict with no solid proof? 

I look through more photos of Emily. She's awake, all of a sudden, struggling in her rapist's hold. In the next two shots she's being choked.

“She woke. What does he give them? GHB?”

“Whatever it is, the lass had a high tolerance. Seemed to work like a charm with the rest of them.”

“Do you know what he did with the body?”

“Nope, lost him. But he's dumb, prolly left a lot of evidence. They might find her, so you better hurry. When you gonna do it?”

“This week.”

“Seriously though, what's with the kid?”

“Take a guess.”

He feigns deep thought. “Lemme think... he's only here for your unhealthy personal amusement and only until you grow bored and toss him aside like an old toy?”

“See? You can be so smart if you want to.”

He flashes me his ugly, yellow smile. “Love you, Sebby, you sick son of a bitch.” 

I send him away (managing to dodge his attempt at a kiss) and walk back inside the house, where Ciel is already waiting for me on the study sofa. He has red blotches where Grell had grabbed him, on his chin and along his jaw, as though he'd scrubbed himself clean with a sponge.

“Curious company that you keep,” he comments coolly upon my entrance. “Or was that a patient of yours?”

“No, he's beyond help.”

He smirks. “Oh? The esteemed Dr Michaelis can't handle a common junkie?”

I could straighten Grell if I wanted; I just don't want to.

“As far as junkies are concerned, he's anything but common. Also, no amount of esteem can be of much help if one does not wish to be helped.” I send him a meaningful glance, grabbing my notepad. “I apologise for his behaviour. I saw that it disturbed you.” 

“He stank.”

“And he touched you.”

“He did.”

I take a seat, unfastening the button of my jacket. “You don't like that. Does it happen with other people?” 

“Sometimes.”

“Are you ever reluctant to talk with other people of fear that they might touch you?”

“Reluctant – yes. Afraid – no.”

“But you are not able to function normally because of that.”

“I'm not particularly passionate about talking with other people anyway, in the event you haven't noticed.”

“Why?”

“It's pointless.”

“You talk with me. Voluntarily.”

“Maybe because you don't have to ask what happened to my bloody eye, at least.”

“Does my knowing not make you uneasy?”

“No, because you don't fuss. Like you said.” His eye twinkles with something that might be mischief. “Which doesn't mean I find you any more agreeable than before. The opposite, in fact, and I have a new hypothesis as to why.”

“I see. Let's go back to your—”

“Wait, am I not supposed to speak my mind during these sessions? _You’re_ on my mind. Isn’t that important?”

“At this stage? Not as much. This isn't about me.”

“I can tell you a story, then. About _me_.”

“Please do.”

He sinks further into the sofa, fingers intertwined on his lap. “When I was eight, my mother took me on a walk to the forest. Imagine early autumn, warm weather, birds still singing, couples holding hands… _idyllic_ , truly,” he says it like it's bad. “I hated walks, they were pointless. There were things more absorbing in books than the outside world, I thought. But just as we were about to head home, something caught and held my eye: a lone penny bun, ripe and majestic, just by the trunk of a tree. I stood there watching it sparkle with dew in the autumn sun, unable to look away, even though at eight years old I already believed myself above such childish trifles. Even I, as it turned out, could stand in awe before some stupid mushroom.”

He scoffs, shaking his head. And looking at him, I can tell that his wonder at the mundane miracles of this world was to never return.

“My mother cut it down with a pocket knife—but on the inside, the penny bun was all black and rotten. She gave me a crooked smile and said, ‘maybe only the bottom part is rotten’, and she kept cutting it piece after piece but _every_ part was rotten, and the more she cut, the more it swarmed with maggots...” he trails off, fixing me with a poignant look.  
  
I sigh. “Am I the penny bun?”

“Pardon. Would you like a prettier metaphor than that of a blighted mushroom? Fine, how about Dorian Gray? Impeccable on the outside, but if someone were to paint a portrait of your inner self it would come out looking like the most hideous abomination?”

I curve my lips to show that I am amused, but I am only half-amused. “I suppose this is where you present your thesis?”

“Yes, well, a lot of dispute seems to surround the term. It's abused in pop-culture, for one, and generally misunderstood. But I think it fits you well, Doctor.” He uncrosses then recrosses his legs, stiffly yet with innate grace. “Words like 'manipulative' and 'deceitfully charming' are often the first ones to enter the narrative. And look at you – with your silver tongue, smart dress, magnetic allure and perfect smiles – you have everyone wrapped around your little finger. Mey-Rin, my teachers, even the scary lady at the liquor shop and that policeman who stopped you for going over fifty. You talked your way out of a speeding ticket when you could've easily afforded to pay because you like that power to influence people, don’t you? It works on your patients too, I'll bet. Isn't that why you're so good at your job? Why you succeeded at such an improbably young age? In London, at that, with all that fierce competition!”

“Charisma alone does not make a sociopath.”

“What about shallowness of affect? I reckon you don't fuss because you simply don't have a damn to give. Patient suicide is guaranteed to deal a blow, especially the first—and yet here you are, carrying on completely unperturbed, even though you were close enough with my aunt to be included in her will. You only act upset when you meet someone who knows about it, like that colleague of yours we bumped into in front of the hospital – remember? And when that junkie pawed at me on the stairway, you barely even blinked. Don't think I didn't notice.”

I steeple my hands. “Let me tell you a story, too. Imagine a John Smith – your regular, tax-paying citizen – feeling lately a little under the weather. He has nausea, headaches, dizziness and insomnia. What is the first thing John Smith does? Googles his symptoms, of course. A few top-page medical sites later, he's convinced of having a brain tumour. Through what is referred to as the ‘confirmation bias’, he filters out the information to fit his theory and ignores all the rest. He panics, worries his wife, and argues with the oncologist when it turns out he's simply overworked. He read that on Google and it sounded smart, so it had to be true.”

Ciel folds his arms across his chest. “Am I John Smith?”

“One shouldn’t go around making bold assumptions without proper knowledge, especially not professional diagnosis. One should leave that to the experts – those who have years of actual in-depth studies and experience behind the belt. Shall I ban you access to some of the shelves in my library?”

Ciel laughs, dry and conceited. “Touché. But you see, I'm something of an expert myself. I've met my fair share of bad people, I know one when I see one. Trust me.”

He lifts from the sofa and steps lightly to where I sit. I don't budge as he leans in – close, closer than I would ever think he’d dare get to anyone, close enough to see clearly into the bottomless blue of his iris and smell the lotus soap he used to wash Grell's touch away.

“As Nietzsche said, there are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth. It’s all there in those stunning eyes of yours, Dr Michaelis; they’re a window to a very black, rotten soul.”

I sit in my study for the longest time, after that. My hand travels up to my face, over my lips, hovering then pressing as if to stifle a yawn.

And I can't stop grinning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~I apologize for making Grell a junkie~~
> 
> I appreciate the feedback so far and always welcome more~~


	8. Chapter 8

The fifth subject of my experiment stirs more peacefully than the previous four. I bound him to the same bed he too had bound his victims (although with entirely dissimilar intent), stuffed his mouth full of dirty socks and wrapped his jaw tightly with duct tape not once, but several times. He doesn't squirm too much – just a few tugs on the binds – and then he falls completely still, getting his bearings.

“Considerate of you to stay quiet. Thin walls.” I smile, pointing to my right. Music can be heard from the flat next door. “Your neighbour is a splendid violinist. Have you met him?”

His breath whistles, drawn heavily through the nose.

“Not yet good enough to be a soloist, though. Does he play in an orchestra? Definitely not just a hobby, he's too determined; it's almost eleven and yet there he goes, testing his neighbours. A conservatoire student, perhaps? Rehearsing for a contest, or an audition?” I muse and stop to listen, swaying my gloved finger to the 4/4 beat of Fritz Kreisler's _Prelude and allegro_. A crisp, riveting melody.

“Ah, he made a tiny slip on the grace note. Impatient. Whatever it's for, he'd be much better off with Wieniawski's _Polonaise brillante_ , I should think. He practised it earlier, and I must say you've missed out on quite the performance. Excellent phrasing, seamless shifts, perfect intonation on the chords... a challenging repertoire, to be sure, and yet he delivered it with such lightness and deceptive ease, just like it's meant to be played.”

My gaze moves slowly to the bound man. His own is invariably pinned to my face, trying to assert his fortitude. “But you don't really care for music, do you? No, you're a very crude individual. No sense of romance, either.” I smack my lips, holding up two of Grell's printed photos. His eyes widen in fearful recognition; he must know what this means from watching the news. I was benevolent enough to apprehend him before tonight's hunt, and whoever would've fallen prey to this measly predator doesn't even realise her own luck. She's welcome.

“Crude, yes, and reckless. Always brought them here, didn't you? Thin walls, winos stumbling about the street, windows peering onto the car park... someone could've seen you drag those swooning darlings into your back seat, or chanced upon as you dumped them in one alley or another. Although considering the widespread insensitivity of present times, I wouldn't be surprised if someone saw you and calmly strolled by.”

The violinist behind the wall picks up the tempo, transitioning smoothly into the second part of the piece. 

“Here's where your luck ends, however. There's always a bigger fish. You live on the second floor, love – these shots were all taken through the space in your balcony blinds. Feeling stupid now, hmm?” His eyes glaze over, bleached of any and all hope. “Well, that's because you are. Stupid and tedious. I helped myself to your social media accounts and everything,” I say, pulling out his phone and my touch pen. It's a handy thing to have while wearing gloves. “That's a lot of rejected sex offers littering your inbox, for one. Is this honestly why you were doing this? Because women wouldn't fall for your abysmal pick-up lines? Did one of them break your poor little heart and hurt your fragile male ego, is this how it all started? Did you seek to compensate through bedroom conquests and failed every time?” I sigh, throwing his phone on the bed. “I can't even be bothered with this. I just really want to skip the villain speech and tear you apart now, if you don't mind.”

He tries his luck in screaming, but there is none to be had. I reach for the filleting knife I had taken out of his kitchen, enticed by its freshly-sharpened potential, and weighing it in my hand I step through his cluttered flat toward the bed. He screams louder, veins bulging and vocal cords straining to their limit, all barely audible through the socks and multiple layers of tape. Even if someone could hear him through the block's thin walls, would they really come running valiantly to his rescue? I don't even have to wonder. There is a phenomenon called 'diffusion of responsibility' which means that in big, bustling cities heroism is essentially extinct.

I turn my cold, harrowing glare at the rapist. His bladder gives out as I begin to cut into his abdomen, just below the sternum, skin and fat yielding to the sharp press of stainless steel. Would Phantomhive find my eyes stunning _now_ , I wonder? Only at times like these can my mask peel away, only now can I lose the phony cordiality of my smile and assume the wicked, demonic sneer that adequately reflects my rotten soul. Am I as perfect now, little one? Would you like me better this way? I carve. The violinist starts over from _allegro molto moderato_ , but I don't listen. I have something else to delight in, entirely. The filleting knife cuts a linear, almost surgical incision all the way to his pelvis, and I slip both hands inside to pry the wound open—like curtains on a window.

It's not going to take long. Thick, dark blood pumps out in ample gushes as I rummage in his entrails, careful not to dip more than my glove. I count the tears of pain that stream down his cheeks, and I lose count very fast.

“Cheer up!” I beam, squeezing and pulling out his intestines, inch by inch like a string of rope. His eyes roll into the back of his head. “Guess who's going to be the star of tomorrow's morning news? Or, well— afternoon, depending on how quickly they find you.” I pause, considering. “How about I put on some loud heavy music? I'm not so sure about screams, but loud heavy music is bound to bring at least a dozen of furious neighbours to your door. They'd find you in five minutes. It's a mad world, am I right?”

He's coughing now, gargling. Blood surges through his nose and it must be flooding his throat as well, soaking his dirty socks and making him choke.

My skin prickles, my mouth waters. Life slowly leaves his tortured eyes, and I pull out from his body to admire the gory palm of my right hand. I like all things black, but my gloves are white for a very simple reason: I enjoy seeing them stain red. I clench my fist and watch the excess of blood trickle through the spaces between my fingers, coming down inexorably from the height of my elation. Time resumes its flow and I can hear the music again, I can see the entire room and not just the mauled carcass of my prey.

To mark him officially as number 5, I scatter Grell's photos around the body in chronological order. The knife, put to good use, lies barely visible in a pile of guts, and the phone I've thrown on the bed is sinking gradually into a pool of blood. I leave them both where they are; let the police find it, let them analyse this meaningless evidence all they want. I pack the gloves into a plastic zip-bag, hide them inside my coat and then pause, as always, with one hand at my chin to ponder the deed.

The crime scene is messy—bowels hanging limply from the victim's torn abdomen, strewn about the bloodied and urine-soaked sheets—but the perpetrator himself is without a single stain. How fortunate that it's the forensic cleaners that will have to mop this up, not me! It is by far my favourite part of the experiment.

I exit the flat, leaving the door wide open. Someone might see me on the way out, of course, but I don't even bother with wearing a balaclava. I find it in awfully poor taste. 

When the police start going from door to door, asking if anyone had witnessed anything unusual in the neighbourhood that night, someone could remember the tall, handsome man dressed in black exiting the building at the exact time of the murder. I'm not a forgettable face, and the composite sketch would turn out very accurate; known at the MPS for my help with criminal profiling, I would be swiftly identified and called for interrogation. I would lie my way out and come up with the most credible excuses on the spot, but I would have no confirmable alibi and they would have no irrefutable proof. Bard and Abberline and Chief Superintendent Randall would all vouch for my integrity, but the first seed of doubt would still have been planted. They would start examining me closer, watching my every move, and another small mistake would be enough to bring me down. I do entertain the thought of being infallible, but my biggest fault lies in craving to be entertained.

 _Dulce periculum_ , danger is sweet. I used to be overly meticulous about my kills, tolerating no room for error and leaving nothing to chance, but I have long since tired of playing safe. Now I tempt consequence, introduce the slightest risk factor to my ritual just because I can, because it amplifies the gratification of escaping unpunished. I do sometimes chastise myself for the recklessness—urging that I am supposed to be too clever to get caught, that I am another level of predator entirely, that one little mistake can mean I won't ever feed my Todestrieb again—yet it does nothing to temper my perilous whim, not in the least. From what I know about fear, captivity is what I should fear happening the most, but my pulse remains steady as I exit the building, and fear is just another empty word I had to teach myself to understand.

***

I come home at quarter past one. Has he been found yet, I wonder? Morning news or afternoon news? Perhaps one of the neighbours from above, stomping down to quiet the inveterate violinist on floor two, had stopped in their tracks at seeing the door to flat number nine suspiciously open. Perhaps they had knocked, waited, called out a tentative _hello?_ —and then entered at last to the sight of their neighbour's freshly disembowelled cadaver, surrounded with photographs of all the girls he'd raped while they slept soundly upstairs. Perhaps it will haunt them for the rest of their life, and the thought alone puts me in a still better mood.

Ah, now I feel too roused to sleep. I might as well stay up the whole night and do some work. But just then, as I enter the kitchen to make myself coffee, from one of the rooms above comes a noise.

Screaming. Frenzied, broken, making me smile.

So then your demons come at night. You cannot do anything about it, can you, when they hunt you through your dreams? In our sleep, we are most vulnerable. We cannot control or deceive our unconscious. Pity... isn't it?

I don't wake him. He has always fought his demons alone and tonight shall be no different. I take a pot, pour milk and put it on the stove. Waiting for it to heat up, I listen calmly as he thrashes in his bed. _No, no, stop, don't touch me, help, please._ A loud bang tells me he must have knocked his bedside lamp to the floor, and the sound seems to jerk him from the throes of his nightmare. There's silence.

I add a spoonful of honey to the hot milk and walk upstairs, knocking only to enter without permission; as a worried caretaker, I do reserve my right to intrude in good will. He's not in his bed and the balcony door stands half open, letting a current of cold air into the room. I find him outside, barefoot and wearing only his nightgown, leaned against the railing on the first night of December. He turns my way—and I freeze in rapture at the threshold, mug in hand.

It's like I'm seeing him for the first time. Scars span from his brow to the lower lid, jagged and silvery pale, like a row of strings on a broken harp. A small, coma-shaped gash mars the bottom corner of his eye, where only residues of some ironic luck had saved him from the knife digging into the pink tissue of his tear duct and uprooting the eye from its socket. The iris itself has lost nothing of its vivid violet, though it did lose its spark of life and that sharp, iridescent gleam so striking in its blue twin. It looks desolate, hollow, like a cold hearth where a burnt blanket of cinders was all that remained of a once magnificent fire. And if eyes were windows to the soul, the light in one of his windows has forever gone out.

Most would call it an unfortunate waste of beauty, but I can't help but think it adds him charm. It speaks to the torments of his past, and torment suits him remarkably well. 

My gaze pans lower, following that trail of torment to the slender length of his neck, down to the thin arched ring of a scar not often seen on the living. Here, too, he'd been rescued by a stroke of morbid luck. He wouldn't have survived had the cultists been recalled while he still had strength to struggle; it was only later, seeing no chance of either fight or flight, that his body shut down and braced for unavoidable impact. His heart rate slowed down and prevented him from bleeding out just long enough for his aunt to snort cocaine and drive him to an underground doctor. And here he was, dreaming of it three years later.

That which does not kill us is supposed to make us stronger, but Ciel Phantomhive seems to have left his strength in the clutches of nightly horrors. Come morning he will reclaim it, dress himself up in indifference and lordly decorum, but for now his hands tremble squeezed on the balcony's banister and his gaze is glassy, hair tousled, lips red from being bitten. He has the stillness and melancholy of a painting – set against the moody background of a crescent moon and two straggling stars – and in my own way, I do appreciate fine art. Even I can stop to marvel at something other than death and decay. It would seem that Angelina Dalles was right: beautiful, perfect things like him were meant to be broken. They break wonderfully. 

“Come inside, it's cold.”

“Good,” he says, voice rasped from screaming.

I step forward and hand him the hot milk, steaming in contact with December air.

“How did you know?” he mutters, wrapping his hands around the mug.

 _Your aunt spat it out to me with her dying breath_ , I don't say, leaning on the other side of the railing. I never come out here, I realise, and it's almost unreal how much of London's lights can be seen from my little hill in Hampstead.

“Your aunt spoke of you a lot in therapy,” I say instead.

“Aw. How sweet of her.” He aims for his usual smirk, but it comes out dim and wearied.

I must ask. “How often?”

A sip. “At least once a month, sometimes more.” A pause. He takes a deeper breath and looks away. “I mean, I have nightmares almost every night. Just not always so real. In these, I can... _feel_ it. Hands, all over me. Pressing me down. Like sleep paralysis, only I can kick and scream and it never helps, they don't ever let go. I can feel their breaths and that itching scratch of stubble and the stink of their sweat, and—” Ciel stops, realising he'd spoken with emotion. “Just all of it, everywhere, again.” 

I begin to put on my best mask of compassion when I remember that he hates it when people fuss. He told me not because he seeks my sympathy; he wants a solution. If I help fend off his nocturnal demons, will I gain his trust?

“We'll try something called Imagery Rehearsal Therapy for tomorrow. You can sleep longer, I'll make breakfast around ten. Fruit salad or scones?”

“Both,” he says, drinking the rest of his milk in silence. Soon we are chased off by a raw gust of wind and inside, under the light of the chandelier, I can see the splashes of pink on his knees and the goosebumps that cold has put over his pearly skin. I pick up the fallen lamp (not broken, thankfully, it's a rather expensive Edwardian) and watch him crawl back underneath the covers. I pause, hesitant. Surely he wouldn't want me to tuck him in.

“If you try to sing me a lullaby or kiss me goodnight, I swear I’m calling child protection,” he grumbles, buried all the way under silken sheets. I chuckle. “But don’t go. Stay with me until I fall asleep. Fulfil your duty as my legal guardian or whatever.”

I flip off the lights and sit by the bed until his breath grows even.


	9. Chapter 9

The house has three bedrooms, three bathrooms, two sitting rooms, two halls, one kitchen, one dining room, one library, one study, one cellar, a waiting room for patients and a sizeable garden. It amounts to seventeen locations in total, but to find Ciel Phantomhive one only ever needs to look in the library and his quarters upstairs. If my bland, tempered reaction to all things unexpected can be called 'surprise', I am reasonably surprised to find him having a cup of Darjeeling in the main parlour, watching some cheap talk-show on some no-name channel exploiting sensation to kick up their ratings.

I stand behind the sofa and listen.

“Is it, though? About getting their just deserts?” says the host to his guest, Dr Stoker, whose surname I have never seen published in anything ever and who was nevertheless supposed to constitute authority in the matter. “If I were out to deliver poetic justice, I would've burnt the arsonist, would've shot the arms dealer, and instead of disembowelling the rapist I would've— well, gone _lower_ —”

How erudite. They don't even seem to call the victims by their names anymore, and I have been seeing this tendency all around. Have they been dehumanised already, viewed solely through the prism of their crimes? No one seems to call their deaths 'tragic', only 'brutal'. No one seems to weep their loss or celebrate their memory. I am still a 'heinous killer', but they are not 'martyrs' to my atrocious cause. They went down as arsonists and rapists and it already says a lot about the nature of human morality. 

“Everyone assumed it was about just deserts for the lack of a better explanation,” replies Dr Stoker, adjusting his sleeve, “but he's definitely not going for the 'hero' angle here, his executions are too brutal—and he doesn't seem eager to explain his justice to the rest of us, either. We've really got ourselves one curious vigilante.”

I don't leave signatures, I don't leave memos, I don't send letters to the media. Any intervention would distort the results of my experiment. The less they know of me, the better. _They_ are the ones supposed to ascribe philosophy to my deeds, not I. _T_ _hey_ need to explain why I do this and show me how _they_ think. I can't call it justice, _they_ need to.

I take a seat next to Ciel. We didn't see each other this morning; I made breakfast and had to leave for an early engagement. It was Mr Tanaka, as usual, who drove and picked him up from school. He's still in his uniform – the well-tailored indicative of an expensive, private institution – except without his usual scarf underneath the emerald blazer. Looking again, I see that the skin on his neck is smooth and unmarred. 

I hardly ever do things involuntarily, trained as I am to beware of consequences, but I reach out to trace a finger along his throat entirely on a whim, smearing the thick layer of make-up that has been hiding the ring of his scar.

He freezes. Skin on skin, I shouldn't have. _My_ skin tingles at the touch, but his own must bristle and crawl. Am I to lose the progress we made on yesterday's session? Is he going to slap my hand away and scrub himself clean? He fears touch more than he admits, and fear is not something that anyone—even he—is able to command. Touch, through repetition inseparably linked with pain, has conditioned an automatic response of fear in his nervous system; consciously he may realise I mean him no harm, but his body will respond in its own ways. Just like in any other phobia.

“What?” he asks, pushing off my hand. “They turned up the heating at school. How else do you think I hide it in summer?”

I blink. My finger comes out dabbed in dry, ivory concealer. I can see him itching to rub the spot where I touched him, but he endures it and turns his gaze back to Dr Stoker. The show is ending.

“Is everything all right? Not only are you watching television but indulging in tacky talk-shows... Should we have an extra session this week?”

Ciel scoffs, lifting his teacup. “BBC's too prudish, so tacky is all I have. They may be talking nonsense, but at least they're talking.”

“My, so it takes a murderer to get you involved with the real world. What grim interests, for a thirteen-year-old.”

“Don't sass me, Doctor. As if you don't pounce on every bit of news yourself.”

“Professional curiosity, on my part. Penny for your thoughts?”

“Ha, always seeking to dissect me. It's _your_ area of expertise; perhaps you could share insight, for a change. The police asked you to do a profile, didn't they?”

They did. I will tell some smart lies, offer some fresh yet misleading perspective, beat about the bush – I am good at that. But I will not meddle with my own experiment. 

Ciel regards me expectantly above his tea. His countenance brims with aristocratic grace, magnified still more by the elegant uniform fitting perfectly on his slender frame (though I'm sure he could manage to look regal even in dirty rags). His sapphire eye, fringed with long lashes, appears capable of seeing right through my elaborate lies; inquisitive, astute, daring me to test him.

I choose to steer a middle course.

“Even if it is about just deserts—which still remains the most plausible option—hardly anyone seems to entertain the possibility that he's killing because he likes it. He doesn’t form a telltale modus operandi because he wants unique experience out of each kill, and he doesn't match the victim's crimes because it's about what he wants at the moment of the deed. Or”—I reach for the remote to turn down the volume—“it might not even be about justice at all. Perhaps he only wishes to mock them. 'Look how easy it was to catch you, look at the photos you never saw me take, at all the evidence you'd failed to cover. I can kill you in your own bed and get away with it just fine. I know how to commit crimes, you don't'. Perhaps it's a way of asserting superiority.”

“God complex?”

“Likely so.”

“A need, you say. Hm.” Ciel's pink tongue flicks over his lip, and I watch it disappear into his mouth perhaps too closely. “The killings are violent, but not impulsive enough to suggest a need. Needs, urges, especially wild ones, tend to overcome. He selects victims too carefully, waits too patiently to strike.”

Ah. If only I could do away with patience and planning and unleash my urges every time I felt that tingling at the base of my spine! If only, instead of telling my Todestrieb to wait, I could smile and let it execute its wild bidding!

“Impulsiveness and blind catering to one's feral needs are symptoms of stupidity. He's not stupid.”

Ciel pours more tea, musing over the matter. “You know, the question people ask the most is whether he's mentally ill, or biblically evil.”

“Ah. That's a subject for a later and longer debate. But he seems perfectly aware of what he's doing – that he's acting against the commonly conceived notions of 'good' and continues consciously along the notions of 'bad' – and this would make him, in that same broad understanding, evil, not mentally unsound. But I doubt it's that simple.”

“Why not?”

“He might, for instance, be choosing to channel his irrepressible urges in the least destructive fashion, and the evidence he leaves of his victims' crimes is meant to provide him with a viable motive, a noble justification that would alleviate the weight of his actions and soothe his plagued conscience. For many, the definition of evil is remorselessness and premeditation; it would therefore become debatable where exactly someone so aggravated by their own nature would fall on the spectrum of good and evil.” 

Ciel hums and pins his gaze to the television, now running commercials before afternoon news: shampoo and toothpaste and new diet yoghurt. 

“Curious, isn't it,” he says. “The web is abundant with anonymous voices hailing him a hero. A serial killer on the loose normally means widespread dismay, but with _him_ on the loose, no one is afraid to turn off their lights after dark. Those with a clean conscience sleep even better.” He huffs, tracing a finger along the porcelain brim of his favourite cup. “And yet not one will publicly condone him. People are scared to condone murder in any form, ever. Inwardly they are glad for the world to be rid of arsonists and rapists—but at the same time, they shudder at the thought of someone usurping the right to pass judgement, more so a right executed in a similarly savage manner. Quite lost in this odd little dilemma, aren't they.”

Yes, yes. I thought you might understand, little one, that's precisely my point.

“How do _you_ feel about it?”

A shadow seems to come over him at the question, like a dark cloud appearing out of nowhere to shroud a flawlessly blue sky. Have his demons finally come out to play? 

“He’s killing _vermin_ ,” he spits, hushed and contemptuous. “If things were different, perhaps I could be bothered to consider it from a wider angle. I could take the moral high-ground and condemn this feral, pathological need you claim that he has, or denounce him on the simple basis that circumstance or motive don't matter when it comes to murder.” The teacup shakes as he tightens his grip on the saucer, staring intently at the flashing screen ahead. There is a hint of madness in that stare; in his voice, more than a hint of ire.

“But no, I don’t care for wider angles. My only angle is selfish and subjective, too narrow to make room for moral dilemmas. He’s killing vermin, and it serves them right. I don't actually give half a shit if he's sick or evil or if he's doing it for justice or amusement. London is full of vermin, and they should be eradicated. I don’t want him to get caught—no, I _root_ for him—because I like knowing that vermin die while I sit and sip my tea. Write _that_ down in your notebook, Dr Michaelis.” 

I take a deep, slow breath. Oh, I shall—and my diagnosis is hatred. There is so much hatred in you, little one! Your lone eye flares with its malignant fires. Such raw, exquisite wrath; locked within your petite body, twisting at your pretty face, darkening your brilliant iris into a murky hue... I find it rather alluring. It pulls me in. A hatred so passionate and pristine, it seems a shame to try to cure it. No, I want to cultivate it, refine it, polish it like the rarest gem. I want to watch it unfurl and consume – yourself, or those around you. 

I have good news for you and your hatred, little one. If you wish to see the world burn, you happen to be in the right place at the right time.


	10. Chapter 10

Snow has fallen. Not to melt at once into the dirty brown slush that sticks to shoe-soles and floods the pavements; it fell in pure, plentiful heaps to encase all of London just in time for Christmas.

Mey-Rin, giddy with festive spirit, has made it her ambition to drag Ciel for walks through Hampstead's picturesque parks and snow-capped streets, parading him happily around the neighbourhood he had not once thought of exploring on his own (walks are pointless, he maintains, and Mey-Rin has not yet succeeded in changing his mind). One day, she tried to persuade him into making a snowman – first and last opportunity of his lifetime, she urged – only to end up making one all by herself, singing off-tune as she trundled balls of frost-hardened snow through my garden. Ciel sat watching her on the bench, gloved hands linked under his chin, and did not even chuckle when she tripped and fell face-first into a deep pile of snow. He did not crack the faintest smile when she emerged from it red-faced and laughing, chiding herself for being a klutz in a final, doomed attempt to infect his sadness with her childish joy. Ciel did not like snow.

But a few days before it fell, we were visited by something much more unpleasant: all four of the Midfords, showing up for a home inspection without a word of announcement. I clashed my gaze with Frances Midford in the doorway and gave her the most obviously artificial, most nauseatingly sweet of smiles as I said, “Welcome, please stay for dinner.” I wound up stranded in the kitchen for the better part of the afternoon, preparing a three-course meal while Elizabeth pranced noisily around the house and Mrs Midford bombarded Ciel with endless questions. 

I undertook to impress my unwanted visitors with French cuisine – knowing they have wined and dined in Paris for over twenty years – and enjoyed watching Mrs Midford's fruitless efforts to find something wrong with my bœuf bourguignon. She threw each of her children a murderous glare saying 'don't look too pleased or act too nice', which meant that Elizabeth had to stay silent all dinner because 'pleased' and 'nice' was all she knew how to be. Edward pretended not to have seen, going through that rebellious age when his parents' word existed solely to be defied—and also that curious, confused age that caused him to blush and shift uneasily under the table every time I caught him staring. Mr Midford tried to play the mediator but glanced always to his wife for approval, and his only idea of discharging the ambiance were clumsy, ill-timed puns which he prepared between strategic sips of Pommard.

Rather frightful company, the lot of them—if not for Ciel. It was Ciel who kept everything glued together, transformed all at once into a decorous host, the star of the soirée: always with the right words at the ready, filling charged silences with pleasantries and elaborate nothings of which I thought him incapable, steering the conversation into safe harbours whenever it drifted too far into dangerous, hostile waters. At one point, while reminiscing in detail about his visit to France, he went so far as to start extolling my culinary skills in a way I hadn't heard him speak even of chocolate. “Such authentic taste—wouldn't you agree, aunt Frances?” he said, dabbing a napkin at the corner of his mouth, and aunt Frances had really no other choice but to agree.

Later still, as we finished with blueberry sorbet to the dulcet sounds of Debussy's _Suite bergamasque_ , he engaged me in a cultured discourse about impressionism in French music – which, I must say, pulled me out just in time from an onset of much less cultured thoughts. Watching Ciel eat his desserts has become something of a secret indulgence of mine; the way he would pop a forkful of cake into that pouty, insolent mouth and sometimes, when he found it particularly to his liking, would let slip a small hum of approval or unguarded purr of delight, making me crave delicacies of an entirely different sort and awakening a taste for something other than sugar. I'm sure Mrs Midford wouldn't have liked where my mind went just then, as he sucked on his little spoon until the sorbet melted on his tongue, but her instincts were too dulled by the dazzle of Ciel's performance to notice anything out of order. _Look at us_ , he was all but saying, _what good friends we are, how marvellously we get along_. But in spite of these artful efforts to weave an illusion of happiness he did not, even once, lift his rosy lips in a smile; he did not so much as try to fake it, the way I fake it, even though the entire evening had been nothing but a giant, sophisticated fraud. “You were perfect, as always,” he told me once we were alone, breathing a sigh of fatigue, “let us hope they quit fussing after that.” 

But they didn't. On his thirteenth birthday, after he'd explicitly expressed himself against any manner of celebration, they made a tremendous fuss and abducted him for a full day of shopping (courtesy of Elizabeth, who dragged him around London's finest tailors in a momentous task to make him 'even cuter'). He came back looking like he'd been through a world war, and when Christmas came just one week later he was forced to go through another. “I know you're an atheist, Doctor Michaelis, but you are welcome to join us for dinner all the same,” said Mrs Midford with a none-too-covert hint of _don't come_ , looking just as pleased when I declined the invitation as Ciel looked disappointed. 

Yes, he wished I could have been there. He has grown attached to me despite his resistance, even if the attachment was of a purely intellectual nature. It revolved around our outings to the Opera House and Festival Hall; around our matches in chess, which I kept losing; around the exhaustive discussions he was willing to conduct on every subject but his own. Emotionally he remained as distant as the day we shook hands at his aunt's funeral, and his mistrust of me had not lessened since the day he pronounced me a sociopath—but even this cautious sympathy seemed to me a remarkable achievement, seeing how he'd kept everyone at an arm's length for no less than three years. He'd been alone, both by choice and by chance, severing himself from human contact and denying all affections. He didn't want it, he didn't need it, everything was pointless. But I made room for myself and bit by bit I will make more, expanding my presence until he's filled to the brim.

The therapy was moving forward, though his nights had got worse before they got better. His birthday, Christmas holidays, snowfall – it all took him back to his dark room in Earl's Court. To him, the merriest time of year symbolised the most horrid and hopeless time of his life. He even agreed to take medication during his stay at the Midfords', hoping it would prove enough to keep him from waking them with screams and shattering his illusion of _everything's fine_. And whenever he did scream, writhing to escape the hold of invisible yet merciless hands, I was always there to wake him. Shivery, sweaty, he sat waiting for his cup of milk and then clinging onto that cup of milk he scrambled for courage to voice his terrors. No, not for courage—he wrestled with the distaste for his own weakness, hating to grant me even the smallest peek through the cracks in his walls (not so easily stormed, I found, rigorously defended). Such a prideful little creature, to be angry with himself for having nightmares! He may not tolerate weakness but his weakness, like his hatred, is a luxury from the highest shelf. While he rejects it, I want to bask in it. When it comes to misery I am a connoisseur, and my refined palate was quickly developing a taste for Ciel Phantomhive—so much that he was turning me into a quite the picky eater. 

The night he finally broke the Edwardian lamp, I found him curled up in a ball with his hands clasped tightly around the scarred flesh of his throat. He did not stir at my calls, nor did he react when I shook his shoulder and tried to pry away his hands. I managed to take the pulse from his wrist, 32 feeble beats per minute, chest barely rising and falling with shallow breaths. His skin was cold, eyes bleary and half-open, staring into nothingness in the peculiar way only the eyes of the dead stare into nothingness, which I would know all too well. And he might as well have been dead in that moment, anaesthetised and disengaged from the waking world, trapped in the impenetrable sphere of his disassociated mind. I sat by him and was tempted to touch, to see perhaps all the scars I have not yet seen but knew had been burned painfully into his back, covered then with a thin layer of cotton cloth I could have lifted over his hips and _looked_ — but I didn't. My temptations were usually tempered with consequences, but with no consequences to heed I was stopped by a temptation stronger still – for what would it be worth without his lucid and willing submission? He was the kind of prey I wanted to lure and tame into trust before sinking my teeth in its flesh, and it's far from the most bizarre whim I've ever had. I was used to all manner of whims, coming and shifting and going – spinning like a lottery wheel, like a casino roulette – forgotten once satisfied, replaced with another, then another, like pages torn from a calendar. My breath rustled the fine hair on his scalp as I leaned close and inhaled; just one deep lungful of his scent was all I allowed myself that night. I stayed with him until morning, a phony display of solicitude, dozing off in the armchair next to his bed.

***

Days passed, well into January, on sleepy winter mornings and early dark, on warm sounds of cello sonatas and rich, fruity spices of Amarone sipped by the crackling fire. And all the snow; I don't think it has snowed this hard in England since my blurry, numb years in the children's home on Chapel Street. It's snowing now, as I sit in my office, powdery flakes swirling whichever way the wind happens to blow them, piling atop the slanted curves of the roof to then shower and cascade in little avalanches onto my garden. The evening is otherwise serene, all dim lamplight and Glenn Gould on repeat, enjoyable even despite my unbridled affinity for tumult and chaos. There is a glass of dry vermouth sitting half-full on the coffee table – apéritif before the nearing dinner and refreshment to my monthly lecture of The British Journal of Psychiatry – which I finish just as the entryphone announces a visitor at the gate, rupturing the serenity with a series of loud buzzes.

I open to the sight of Bard wiping his shoes on my welcome mat, stomping around in a tenacious effort to shake all the mud off his shoes. There is a flurry of snowflakes about him – on his tweed Irish cap and striped scarf and well-worn coat – threatening to put out the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth in its usual way: limp, and the way he sees it, uniquely flamboyant. There is a false note in the smile he presents me in greeting, and I am as sensitised to false notes as a musician with perfect pitch.

“Hiya, Sebastian! Sorry to drop in on you like that. You busy?”

My eyes – watchful, inescapable – scan him surreptitiously from head to toe. His awkwardness is not due to suspicion; if the thought so much as crossed his mind, it would show in the form of a big blaring dissonance rather than a mere false note. He's a terrible liar.

“Just finished up. Come on in.”

I pour him whisky on the rocks without asking if he wants it (he always wants it, the well-aged Macallan he can't afford), and handing him the drink I finally put my finger on the false note.

“So. You're on the case now?”

“Ugh, hate when you read my mind,” he groans. "That's it. Got a transfer, replacement for another detective. Car crash or something, broken pelvis. Nasty business." He swishes the glass back and forth, the way many people do in prelude to the first sip. It's the same whisky I poured Angelina Dalles on her last session, on the anniversary of the accident that took two lives and ruined two more. Miss Dalles had swished her whisky back and forth, too – had thumbed around it and spun it in her lap like she wasn't sure what to do with it – only to gulp it all down like gross medicine or cheap vodka, not like 15-year-old Scotch deserving at least a brief moment of respectful contemplation. Did she pick up on the subtle notes of sherry oak, chocolate aromas and warm, lingering finish? Or did it bring back too many memories, released too many demons? I nearly forget that Bard is still there, seated exactly where she had been that day, burning a hole into her red skirt from Cartier. 

“Feeling way in over my head, to be honest," he says, gnawing on his cigarette. Mayfairs, not Marlboros. "Also we have this bloke now, named Spears, consulting on all the uh— behavioural stuff. Tall, four-eyes, giant stick up his arse... mate of yours? Studied together at Oxford, he says.”

Ah. Good old Will. Always second-best, always one step behind. He was the only person, aside from Ciel, to have ever caught a whiff of my rotten soul. His grudge against me has now lost all of its initial edge, and our battles in the Psychiatry Journal were no longer worthy of my time. He just can't seem to score a win. 

My smile is wan and ambiguous. "Let's say we agree to disagree."

“Well, he came forward with some pretty strong ideas. Said it must be either some grand scheme or vendetta, just waiting to be revealed, and not a speck of randomness in it—quote unquote. He's trying to figure out how he picks them.”

Good luck with that.

“I actually hope he succeeds. Establishing a motive would make the killer easier to catch,” I say, increasingly aware of my unprepared dinner. I wonder what Bard's had today; whatever he's had, I can be sure he murdered it on the frying pan like he murdered that steak he served me and Ronald the first and last time we accepted his invitation to dinner. There's always a faint smell of smoke about his person.

“Catch him... right.” He scratches at his bristly beard. “You know, I've been going through the victims' backgrounds a lot this past week. We keep digging up shit that the vigilante hadn't even touched at. Like, off the top of my head?" He makes a vague gesture. "It was the arsonist who planted that bomb in Brixton two years ago; we found his fucking binder with news articles and whatnot. And the rapist, his most recent? I think we were there when he snatched that blonde back in November, the one that Ronald was so crazy about—rings a bell? Yeah. Pretty messed up, huh? No one saw anything, still haven't found her body. But worst of all..." He sucks in a deeper breath. "Christ, the pedophile was the worst. We found more tapes. Not one kid over seven years old, _fuck_. Nothing's ever made me that sick.”

I muster a disturbed frown. Bard drags a hand through his face and takes a big swig of Scotch, no regard for aftertastes or aromas. This is exactly why I poured him the 15-year-old, not the 25-year-old.

“They're all in therapy now, sure, but that's only thanks to him. Like, if not for him, all those lowlifes would be just prancing about London and hell knows if we would've even caught them. And did you know that we already have a drop in crime rates? Like, biggest drop in over ten years?”

Yes, I'm aware of this unfortunate side-effect of my experiment.

“But then I look at the photos of what he did to them and just— shit, no one deserves that, absolutely fucking mental, I mean— they showed you, didn't they? For the profile?”

I nod.

“So you know.” 

Another nod. All I know is they didn't do my work justice. There's nothing like the real deal, but Bard seems impressed by photocopies alone.

I remember his cheap flat, permeated with the smell of smoke and cluttered with dishes, a bachelor's grimy abode. I can see him bent over case files in his sooty kitchen, restless in the middle of a lonely night, trying to figure out whose side he was really on.

“Anyway, there's all that. You think I should give up my spot for someone who actually wants to catch that wanker?”

No, no. Why else would I bother with you? It's an exchange. You have someone to vent to and buy you drinks, I have someone to bring me all the juicy gossip at the MPS. Believe me, I am paid handsome sums by the hour for lending my ear, and for you I provide that service pro bono. Like a good friend should, so stay where you are.

“I know how you feel. Our lines of work are not that different; we both get to see the worst side of humanity and we both must struggle with moral dilemmas. In psychotherapy, there's something we call countertransference—projecting emotions onto the patient and risking to impair the relationship with personal involvement—and there is only one way to deal with it, really. Just do your job. Take a deep breath, take a step back. Assume a detached, clinical approach. Free yourself from the burden of overthinking and just do your job, it can be easy.”

The false note has not quite gone.

“In the meantime, it doesn't hurt to be honest with yourself. You're not obliged to feel sorry for any of the victims and it doesn't mean you sympathise with the killer. Tell me something, however...” I say, readying my all-time favourite question of the experiment, the one I sneaked in at every opportunity at hand, “if you could, with the snap of your fingers, undo all of these murders – would you? No vigilante. All five left to their devices. Would you do it?”

The ice-cubes melt away in his glass as he sits, poised like an ancient Greek thinker, on my well-attended sofa, one hand curled below his chin and the other clinging to his drink. Rarely do I see Bard indulging in any manner of rumination, and the crease it brings between his eyebrows seems to grant an unexpectedly sentient quality to his otherwise shallow features. Has he thought of it during those lonely nights in his sooty kitchen? Smoking through the window, lying still on his bed? 

His blue eyes are decisive as he picks his answer.

“No, I wouldn't do it.”

“Good call,” comes a voice from the right, interrupting my own. And it's a voice that by now I've come to know well.

Haughty, androgynous. Echoing frequently through my thoughts and saturating the vast spaces of my library. Articulate, often sombre, lined subtly with a metallic rasp and graced with flawless diction, wielded with a distinguished mannerism even while slipping the occasional cuss or recounting nightmares on those lurid, fitful nights when they become too real—a voice that carries the loveliest of screams.

“Good evening,” Ciel offers negligently in Bard's general direction. He's leaning against the archway, arms crossed and legs crossed, wearing the navy suit Elizabeth had him made for his birthday. He turns to me, tone meaningful, “It's half past seven.”

There he is, aloof like a cat, emerging only to be fed; such impertinence, all in front of a guest! I like that.

Everyone has a quality, often more than just one, that I find unattractive. In Bard I dislike his tediousness, lack of imagination and abominable cooking; in Ronald I am put off by his stinginess and gratuitous prattle; in Mey-Rin I scorn her incredible naivety and downright maddening _goodness_ ; in Grell I abhor virtually everything except his guile and a sort of amusing unpredictability that kept me constantly on my toes. But what could I find unattractive about Ciel? His gloom is either a gripping melancholy or adorable grumpiness, especially when Mey-Rin interrupts his reading or Elizabeth appears anywhere within the range of his vision. His arrogance is not the loathsome sort of snobbery for its own sake but a cold, mysterious air of unavailability and well-justified confidence in the supremacy of his mind. It appeals to someone like me, admittedly quite as vain, looking down upon others in quite the similar fashion. And who could blame him, after everything, for turning his back to the world? I just wouldn't have him any other way. All his flaws arrange themselves into a cohesive whole—or slowly begin to reveal a whole, piece by piece, like complicated puzzle. What else might lie within him?

I am in no rush to find out. For as soon as the puzzle is completed, as soon as he bares himself to me and leaves nothing to uncover... well, he'll be just another page torn from a calendar. He'll be like an old, forgotten painting that took away my breath the first time I saw it but kept losing its magic the more I looked, the more I discovered its secrets and learned the meaning behind every play of shadows, every hidden symbol, every stroke of the brush.

“I'm occupied,” I say. “There's some quiche left in the fridge.”

He raises one shapely brow. “From yesterday.”

So high-maintenance, so easily spoiled. I turn to Bard, who took the opportunity to catch up with his Scotch. “Would you stay for dinner?”

“Nah, I've eaten— and was anyway just about to get going, so I guess you fancy folk go have your fancy feast and I'll just be on my way.” He smacks his knees and lifts from the sofa. “Been nice meeting you, uh—”

“Ciel.”

“Fancy name, of course. I'm just a plain old Bard. Say, what got you in the eye?”

“I happened to stand too close to my drunk uncle when he attempted to slice a boar roast at my aunt's birthday party.”

Bard whistles. “That's a man, battle scars already! Looks kind of cool, if you ask me. Wait a couple years and it'll get you all the ladies.”

Ciel's lips twitch in what looks like genuine amusement; perhaps he imagined himself as the archetypal bad-boy with mysterious scars from a mysterious past, sweeping unsuspecting maidens off their feet.

“Take that back, Bard. I don't want him growing up into a Ronald.”

Bard laughs, sans false note, putting on his coat and cap. “Ha, Ronald could use a scar or two, cause his stale pick-up lines sure aren't doing the trick anymore.” He winks at Ciel, thanks me profusely and steps back into the flurry of snowflakes outside. There's serenity once more.

I lock the door and turn around. “Eavesdropping is a bad habit. I'd rather you didn't do that.”

“And I'd rather you didn't tardy with dinner.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~~bit of a filler chapter I'm sorry goodbye~~


	11. Chapter 11

Jaw tight, shoulders stiff, steps prudent. His body tenses up every time he crosses the street, fighting against the reflex to whip his head frantically left and right. His face is sour – Mey-Rin doesn't seem to worry, Ciel's face is usually sour – but I can tell the difference between his usual sour and alarming sour, today distinctly being the latter.

“Come now, enough with the long face! No brooding on my watch, young man!” Mey-Rin chides him gleefully, marching down the pavement in a springy stride. She's let down her hair, swapped the thick glasses for contacts and put on her nicest clothes. Does she want people thinking the three of us are family? Mother, father, son? I'm guessing yes, and she enjoys the idea that people might. Only in the impressions of passing strangers can her fantasy come true. 

“Elizabeth was so sweet and thoughtful on your birthday, so you should surprise her with something nice too!”

“Yes, I'm all about surprises,” Ciel grinds out, ploughing through the steady stream of pedestrians. Walks are pointless, but shopping is torture.

“Not much longer,” I mouth at him, voice low and private, wanting him to know that I know.

“I'm fine,” he snaps.

He's not fine. He hates crowds and Oxford Street is dreadfully crowded on February 13th, the eve of a no less dreadful occasion, timed rather inconveniently with Elizabeth Midford's fifteenth birthday. Each storefront is a tapestry of red and pink (mainly every shade of pink), most borderline tacky but some passably tasteful, hearts and roses and glittering confetti. The sweetness seems inappropriate under the morose, overcast sky—or is it just me? Pink violates my every aesthetic and love is not something I would ever choose to celebrate; if it's in the air, I certainly don't feel it.

But Mey-Rin can. Her cheeks are as pink as the decorations, and it's not from the cold. She can't wait until tomorrow to find out if this year is finally the year I confess to her my passionate love; she can't wait to ask me, as always in that casual-yet-hopeful tone, if I happen to have any plans for Valentine's Day, counting that I would look her deep in the eye and say yes, indeed I had, if only she would do me the honour.

But it's just another one of her fantasies, and this year I have my own (not quite as romantic, no, entirely obscene). I look to Ciel and see that he could not care less about the surrounding sweetness; he has devoted all of his focus to evading the crowd, squeamish as if every passer-by was a stinking drunk or a giant roach. I try to stay close to him and he tries to stay close to me, but he can't avoid it completely: the brushing of shoulders, little bumps followed with pardons, strangers whichever way he turns his head. His walls can't hold off that many raiders at once. I wonder which demons are the loudest today – from his dark month in Earl's Court, or the day he lost his parents?

Not too far away from here, a drunk driver sped past the red light and left him an orphan. Blood on the crosswalk, on the windscreen and the bumper, on the trunk of a roadside tree. Blood and ripped limbs – under the morose and overcast sky, wouldn't that be a far more suitable decoration than gaudy pink hearts? Or is it just me, again? Somewhere—perhaps in the recesses of the infamous dark web—there exists, and circulates, a photograph or two of Vincent Phantomhive's severed head; of Rachel Phantomhive cut in half; of their stunned, speechless, ten-year-old son. 

I haven't been able to find it. Every article I've dug up used the same two pictures and told the exact same story: a tragic tale with a neat morale about the dangers of drink-driving. No one else lost their life that day, and I don't know if Ciel wishes he had lost his; he stubbornly denies me that insight, using the most cunning tricks to dodge and derail the subject every time I attempt to broach it. Even if he does wish there had been room for him under the wheels of the lorry, he had lasted three years without falling into the comfortably numb embrace of death. Whether suicide held to him any allure or not, it hasn't managed to extinguish that kindling passion for life that shimmered underneath his surliness and mirthless smiles. Not everything had to be pointless; not literature, not music, not art. He always had tea and chess and chocolate desserts. There was a life of inner riches he could retreat to, and he hung onto it like a shipwreck survivor hanging onto a scrap of flotsam, drifting endlessly above lethal depths that could swallow him at any moment.

Is this the day he goes under? Well outside the peace of his comfort zone, swarmed with strangers and exposed to roaming stares? Amidst strident clamour and loud, garrulous voices in more than one language? I, too, am reasonably bothered, but I am tall enough to tower above the crowd while he is confined in its broiling centre. Mey-Rin stops to point out a golden necklace on display at the exact same moment Ciel gets swept up by a group of Asian tourists, jabbering indignantly amongst themselves and trampling whatever lay in their path.

Ah. I remember that night Ciel told me about the Chinese strangers. How the sharp, melodious inflection of their exotic dialects reverberates often through his nightmares, engraved into his memory as clearly and permanently as their ruddy, round faces. 

He looks shaken now, as if slapped in the face by a cold wave and soaked to the bone. His noble pale turns a sickly pale and his fists clench in a struggle to regain composure—which he may have regained and may have mended the breach in his walls, but the tourists take notice and rush at once to his rescue. They gather to fawn collectively over the pretty British boy in distress, fretting and peppering him with fervent apologies, some in broken English but most fired in rapid bursts of Cantonese. An older man rummages in his bag for a bottle of water; someone reaches to lay a consoling hand on his shoulder; a middle-aged woman in sunglasses touches a handkerchief to his sweat-soaked temple.

It's too much. Ciel is pushed to the edge of panic: shivering, perspiring, acutely short of breath. Time seems to slow down and the crowd melts into a blurry conglomerate of shapes. There is only him, frozen in horror in the middle of Oxford Street.

And isn't he just so _gorgeous_ like this? Wide-eyed, rosebud lips quivering? My nostrils flare as I wallow in his misery, feeling it in the air unlike the love. I wish I could bottle it up, take home and keep close at all times; I wish I could luxuriate in it longer than those few, short-lived seconds before I am forced to act. For what kind of a psychiatrist would I be if I couldn't handle a little panic attack? What kind of a parent would leave his charge swooning in the middle of a crowded street?

“Get your hands off him _now_ ,” I growl at the tourists and shoo them away like a pack of pigeons. They scurry hastily down the pavement, muttering and tossing glances behind their backs.

“Ciel,” I call out, trying to reach his besieged consciousness over the roar of traffic. “Ciel. You're not in that room, you're safe. I'm here. Breathe, just try to breathe. Deep and slow, you can do it.”

His gaze finds me – feverish, jumpy – all the blue swallowed by the black of his pupil. A tall man on the phone crashes into his shoulder and doesn't even look back. Ciel staggers forward, breath coming in jerky gasps, looking for something to lean against or grasp onto: a railing, a bench, a wall.

But there is only me. I am the only lifeline amid a sea of strangers, the last scrap of flotsam to save him from drowning. I have been by his side whenever he startled awake and stayed at his side until he fell back asleep. I brought him hot milk and listened to his hushed, shameful confessions. I was the only one who knew.

And yet I don't expect him to come stumbling so suddenly into my arms; but he does, burying his face in my chest, bunching his gloved hands into the black wool of my coat. He does, and he trembles.

I feel so shallowly and so rarely that each rare time I make sure to conduct a thorough analysis, as though it were crucial evidence in a high-priority investigation. I put my hand around his back and note that it feels good to hold him the same way sitting by a warm fire feels good, or lying on comfortable cushions. And not the only way, either; there is, primarily, the perverse pleasure of his surrender. “See?” I want to tell him. “I knew you were not fine.” And he knew it just as well, only his pride would never let him admit it. No pride to shield him now, is there? Just me. 

How I wish this were an act of trust, not of necessity! Desperate times call for desperate measures, they say; better the devil you know, they also say, but though he's indeed desperate and I'm indeed the devil, he doesn't know me half as well as he thinks he does. As ironic as it is for him to cling to me thus for safety—the one who could hurt him most and enjoy it best—I do feel some twisted manner of need to protect him, the way a hunter strives to protect his marked quarry. I did not like the Chinese pawing at him and I wanted to strangle the man who had rammed into his shoulder without a word of apology.

If anything should happen to him, _I_ should be the one to happen. His weakness belongs to me alone, the sole keeper of his dark past, and no one else can so much as glimpse at the hatred he carries inside him. All those people who go by and cast quick, curious glances... oh, they have simply no idea, not like I do. Even Mey-Rin hasn't the slightest, fooled like everybody else by Ciel's intricate veneer of well-being. All his sulkiness and bad temper she attributes, surely, to the bereavement he'd suffered by the death of his parents and aunt. I can't see her, but I can picture her stopped still before the necklace on display, peering at us through the spaces in the crowd with her hand pressed worriedly to her bosom, red hair windblown and face stricken with bewildered concern. I'll wager this wasn't how she'd envisioned our little family outing; whatever was going on between me and Ciel, she clearly was never included.

We have to make the most curious of sights, don't we? A grown man and a teenage boy locked in embrace amid cutesy Valentine adornments, forming a patch of free space in the surging crowd; a little bubble of privacy that no one dares burst, a peaceful stone island in the middle of a rushing river. And as we stand there, blocking the pavement and attracting stares, I realise that Ciel's breathing has long since calmed down. I start to suspect he's not letting go because it must feel good to him too, but he was only making sure his visage had moulded into a perfectly unreadable mask of calm before he could break away. As a fellow master of concealment, I do appreciate the fine craftsmanship of his façade; no residue of panic and absolutely no hint of embarrassment.

“I rather like your cologne,” is all he says, tucking the hem of my scarf back underneath the lapel of my coat.

We end up buying the necklace on display.


	12. Chapter 12

A clear February morning at sunrise. White streaks of light pouring into the kitchen, air suffused with the smell of French toast and freshly ground coffee.

It's, as usual, a good morning; I am not of the sort to ever have bad mornings. How can I, after seven hours of dreamless sleep, unburdened by the weight of remorse? For such a remarkable portfolio of cruelties on my conscience, I certainly sleep no worse than a baby. Other people's mornings can be spoiled with a plethora of concerns – for money, family, climate change and lost loves – while I am always as light as a feather.

“Good morning,” says Ciel, entering the kitchen. Now, _his_ sleep is ponderous and not at all like a baby's. He'd been denied peaceful rest for three years and only recently have his nightmares begun to lessen their onslaught. Yesterday he woke only once – not the average three – and fell back asleep after twenty minutes, not an hour. When he says “good morning”, it seems like he genuinely means it.

He strolls barefoot to the fridge, no eye-patch and disorderly hair, yawning as he helps himself to a bottle of fresh milk. I remember our first morning in November, when he came down fully dressed and ate his pancakes with the same stony expression his aunt ate her bœuf bourguignon. He never would have let his scars show so casually then, nor would he have allowed himself to be on anything but his best guard—and how different, already, were those November mornings from the one we were having today.

He lets out another yawn and pours himself a tall glass of milk. His nightshirt rides up as he stretches, inching up higher on his toes. Slowly, languidly. I look above my coffee, entranced by the flash of creamy skin, like a magpie spotting a glint of something valuable. Something it would very much like to possess. 

For weeks now, again like a magpie, I have been stealing: quick, sidelong glances whenever I could afford to, furtive yet brazenly lustful, roving over each lovely detail of his petite physique. No longer was my marvel purely aesthetic and my obsession, fanned each day into a still fiercer flame, has grown inescapably carnal. I've never had or wanted to have one this young, but it came off to me as no surprise; it was but another one of my many whims, and I'm not in the habit of questioning my whims.

Isn't it rather beastly of me, however? Coveting one so damaged by the deviance of adults, pretending to help set him free from wrongful touches while wanting to imprint my own? Just when I thought I've about reached the heights of depravity, there were always new summits to conquer. Good; otherwise I'd be bored.

The only thing I had to do was hide that depravity along with the rest of my sins, and I've already come too close to letting it out of control. Night after night I dutifully chased off the boy's demons, even though I wanted them to return twice as strong and rip him to tiny, miserable shreds—so tiny that he could not possibly piece himself back together, and so miserable that he would have no choice but to cling to me shivering the way he had on Oxford Street. And how much thinner would be the barrier of fabric, too! No woollen coats, no cashmere jumpers, not even a glove. All friction and heat. I would feel every tremor, every panicked breath he would suck into his lungs. I could count his ribs through the shirt, even pinch one between my fingers.

This past week, however, he only seemed to be getting better. I already miss those nights that allowed me into the privacy of his room, where the air was sweet with torment and I could admire him in the dim, intimate glow of his new bedside lamp. Sometimes, when he laid himself to sleep on the side, his shirt would stretch just enough to reveal a tease of lucid white skin—a glimpse of his clavicle or the slightest swell of a nipple grazing the cotton—and I would imagine loosening each button and doing the very things he was trying so very bad to forget. It was hard to resist, yes, but it got even harder; once the lights were out and he told me to stay, my senses felt everything as real as a touch. The evocative whisper of silk as he rolled his sleepy, dainty limbs from side to side and uttered those soft, barely-there sighs into the dark... what agony! Not quite an empty word to me, no, for even though I could not feel it in my heart I could certainly feel it in my body, that agonising burn of unrequited lust I had never known until this moment. And how oblivious Ciel was of that very agony, as he chased his slumber with me guarding his side! Not suspecting what battles I led with my instincts, what vulgar desires I held just barely at bay; not knowing that sometimes I had to bite into my finger to keep myself in check, or that every time, as soon as I was sure he'd drifted off, I slid a hand down my pants and stroked myself to completion. And I was always tempted, to the very last second before spending, to slip under the sheets warmed so invitingly with the heat of his body and feel him stir, drowsy and pliant, as I pressed him into the mattress. I wanted to smash his face into that fluffy pillow he liked so much and let it soak up his screams, loud luscious screams that would scrape his tender throat raw— _no, no, stop, don't touch me, please_. Oh, I knew exactly what they would sound like, all hoarse and strangled and hushing bit by bit as he gave up, because he always gave up in the end. His resistance mellowed always into submission and his pain ebbed always into pleasure. I was nothing like those other men who had defiled him, I could make him scream not in horror but in bliss and—

 _Ah_. What agony indeed! I can't do it this way, can I? No, I want his consent. I'm like a dog, no muzzle and no chain, drooling at the salivating treat all ready and redolent under my nose, holding myself back with a last, frayed string of self-control and the promise of a much tastier feast to reward my patience. It's like—

A shrill crash rends the air, cutting sharply through the fog of my fantasies. My eyes shoot up to see Ciel gawking at me in scandalised awe, milk dripping from the counter and over his nightshirt and onto the floor, shards of broken glass lying scattered around his bare feet. My furtive glance must not have been so furtive and more of a long stare than a glance. Even so, shrouded still in the wisps of my reverie, I can't help but watch the droplets of milk run down the inside of his thighs.

It's the fridge that breaks the silence, beeping obnoxiously that its door has been left open, and it's on this signal that Ciel's shock passes and turns into hatred. That rare, wonderful hatred pointed directly my way.

“ _Got you_ , motherfucker,” he snarls. “I've always known there was something wrong with you, and there it finally is.”

I frown. Thus far I have scolded him but twice: once for snooping around in my notebook, once for eating too much sweets and skipping dinner. Scolding hardly works on someone who carries himself like an adult, but is there anything else I can presently do? Outrage it is, then.

“Just what makes you think you can talk to me like that?”

“Pardon my poor choice of words, you have no mother. As for fucking, I believe you have other tastes. Would calling you a 'vile, perverted vermin' be more appropriate?”

I shake my head. Such crass words coming from such a pretty mouth, in that well-bred English, with so much resentment! Glorious. I pretend to figure out what he could have meant by 'other tastes', frowning pensively as though I'm putting two and two together, and then my face lights up with stunned recognition and my jaw clenches and my gaze steels so that I look positively and utterly appalled. 

Ciel scoffs at my charade. “Aunt Frances got it just right at the funeral, didn't she? And you handled it so well that no one thought to doubt you for even a second. So convincing then and so convincing now... but I'm only half-blind, you see. I _know_ that look, I'd know it anywhere.”

No, this cannot be salvaged. He knew what he saw and would not be manipulated into thinking it wasn’t what he thought he saw. I am a bit irked, if anything; all that work to waste. All those mugs of hot milk and chocolate desserts. And how betrayed he must feel, when only last week he sought comfort in my welcoming arms! 

I wet my lips. The key to reading people lies in finding out their weaknesses, and I have been able to read Ciel Phantomhive enough to know all the things that drive him mad. One – being treated like a child. Two – being compared to everyone else. Three – undermining his judgment. Four – being pitied. Shall I push all buttons at once and see what happens?

“Ciel, please listen. You're getting the wrong idea, and I can explain exactly why—even though it may all sound very confusing.” I raise both hands when he opens his mouth to interrupt me. “At the most critical age, when children just begin to discover their sexual drives, you were subject to terrible amounts of stress and abuse. It twisted your perception, interfered with your growth and caused you to develop a most unhealthy template of sexuality, a highly dysfunctional concept of it that will now stigmatise your every relationship. Your experience has taught you that men are sexual predators who want to take advantage of your body, and through that association you unfortunately came to imagine that I must want that from you as well. I do _not_.”

The fridge is still open, reminding us continuously of that fact between intervals of silence: beep, beep, beep, pause. I can tell Ciel does not believe me – likely because my eyes keep straying to where his damp nightshirt sticks to his thighs – but he lacks arguments and can do nothing but glare. The fifth thing he hates, perhaps even the most, is losing. 

“Think reasonably; you’re projecting your fears unto me, Ciel. You see threat lurk in everyone, not just in strangers on the street. Now that you have finally begun to open up, your brain has launched a defense mechanism to keep me from getting too close. It's okay, it's completely understandable after everything you've been through, I have treated patients just like you in the past. The core of your trauma lies in the severing of human connections, and the core of your recovery lies precisely in their rebuilding. I don't want to exploit your weakness, Ciel; I want to help you overcome it. You really need to trust someone in order to get better, and all I want is for that someone to be me."

I watch him seethe with rage and wonder what it must feel like. I always wonder, but I can never relate. I have felt irritation, all too often. Genuine anger – at rare times I could count on the fingers of one hand. But rage? Uncontrollable whirl of emotions blinding judgement and reason? Rage often drives people to kill – to commit the infamous crime of passion – but I never killed with rage. I didn't hate my victims, it wasn't personal. I killed with joy.

“Unless,” I press on, knowingly overstepping the boundaries, “the distortion you suffered is even deeper. We see what we wish to see; you may have normalised the abuse and may actually _want to_ —”

He doesn't let me finish. When the fridge dares commence its triple beep, he bangs his fist against the door and slams it shut with a loud rattle, with a force I would never expect of someone so frail. And as he stands there trembling amid the fraught, pregnant silence that follows, I glimpse red and look down to see that he has stepped on a shard of glass. His blood trickles and merges with the spilt milk, a thin red river swirling into a sea of white. Ciel doesn't see it, nor does he see me lick my lips.

But when he turns, his eyes are murderous. I mean that. And I barely recognise his voice; low, sinister, dragged through his teeth. The last time I heard it, he told me that all the vermin in London should be rightfully eradicated. 

“Thank you for your input, Doctor, but I've heard quite enough.”

And how close my mask is to dropping! All I want is to spread those wet thighs and take him brutally against his will, right against that counter. It would be so easy to lift and hold him down; my fingers would press bruises into his soft, snow-white flesh. I could look him in the face while I did it, into that hollow violet and hateful blue. I would tear him open and relish in every ounce of his sumptuous pain. Would he cry? I think he would thrash and scratch and curse at me terribly, _then_ cry. Humiliating, helpless tears that I would taste on the tip of my tongue. I would kiss and he would bite; I would squeeze his scarred throat and he would grab a knife from the block and sink it all the way into my guts, making sure to twist the blade before wrenching it out to stab me one more time in the heart. And then he would topple me to the ground, straddle my hips and drop the knife again and again and again, as many times as it would take to quench his boiling wrath.

My blood, his blood, and a sea of milk all flooding the tiles. Everyone is capable of murder under the right circumstances, and Ciel Phantomhive—with his hatred and his demons and deep deathly glare—would surely go for the crime of passion.

I'm almost painfully stiff.

“Don't move, I'll get something to patch up your foot.”

He looks down. I don't think he even felt it. He yanks out the shard in a single pull, releasing a thick spurt of blood. I can smell the tang of it when I take a deep breath. He grabs a paper towel from the counter and attempts to staunch the bleeding.

“I'm fine,” he growls, seeing me get up to help him. “Stay away, you filthy pederast. Lay one finger on me and—”

 _And what?_ say my eyes. He falters. _Just what will you do, little one? There is no way you could stop me. I am the only one who can stop me and I am the only thing standing between you and me. Be careful, for I keep myself on a very thin leash._

I sigh. “I'll ring your school and tell them you're sick.”

He doesn't answer, he doesn't eat his strawberry French toast, he doesn't go to school. He locks himself upstairs and I doubt he'll emerge for dinner. I have pushed all of his buttons and such were the consequences, but even that has not managed to spoil my good morning (although the coffee did get a little cold while we were arguing and my trousers were still uncomfortably tight). To every crisis there was a solution, and I never cared for means – only the end. I pull out my other phone and dial Grell's number.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiii just wanted to remind everyone how much I adore any and all feedback~~ If you're reading and want more then please let me know, it keeps me going! I'd love to hear every opinion and I cherish every smallest comment ^_^


	13. Chapter 13

The sign on the teashop says 'closed'. Stepping inside from the lantern-lit alley, I smell herbs and dust and something sweet, in the worst way, like rotting fruit. The floorboards creak under the lightest step as I make my way deeper, towards the only trace of light among the quiet dark, until I come to a carpeted staircase ending with heavy, soundproof doors that seem to lead to the cellar.

I knock. Fist against steel, loud. When the peephole slides open, what comes out of it are threads of grey smoke that obscure my vision and disperse, eventually, to reveal a menacing pair of bushy brows over the monolid eyes of an Asian. 

“I don't know the password. Tell Lau I'm an acquaintance of Madame Red.”

I thought he would blow more smoke into my face or tell me to bugger off, but he nods somewhat politely and retreats to deliver my message.

How long has this place been running incognito? It took Grell one week to get himself together but only one day to actually find it, while Angelina Dalles had stumbled upon it by sheer drunken chance. Needless to say, I am loath to show my face in obscure venues of this kind – I don't blend in, I stand out – but there is no other way for me to get what I want.

The doors open with a clang and the bouncer comes fully into view, shorter than me but bulkier, with a face empty of intellect but a body rippling with strength – the perfect grunt. “I have to search you, sir,” he says in heavily accented English and proceeds to grope me from head to toe like airport security. He even checks my shoes. The doors lead to storage (stacks upon stacks of tea), and as I'm guided through its chilly corridors my ears pick up the first muffled notes of a commotion, the underground din of voices and laughter that gains in volume the closer we get to another pair of doors—until that doors open and I am smacked in the face with a jarring overload of sights and smells and sounds.

Shuffling of mahjong tiles and knocking of billiard balls; cheers of victory and groans of defeat; clinking of glasses and banging of fists in both anger and uncontained hilarity alike. The room is furnished in the style of Qing dynasty and wreathed in smoke, illuminated by lanterns that shine bright and yellow above tables but dim and red in the corners, decorated with lunar year stickers and charmingly ironic pendants with the Chinese characters for 'fortune' and 'auspicious'. The air is enough to make one's head spin even without the aid of drugs or _baijiu,_ thick with cigar fumes and spicy with incense, undercut with sweat and alcohol and a smothering blend of rich perfume—all of which coalesce into a sensory onslaught that stings my nostrils and prickles at my eyes. 

The bouncer leaves me without a word. I am greeted by a handsome couple in traditional Chinese raiments, the kind seen mostly in history films and high-end tailor shops in China. With his thin, sly eyes and a foxy smile spread over his lips, Lau's face strikes me as not empty but brimming with intellect, with strength far more potent than the strength of muscles. It does take intellect and the slyness of a fox, no less, to rule a secret empire in times when secrets are so hard to keep; in times when they can be hacked from hard drives, reported with a single phone call and proven with the click of a camera; when it takes mere seconds for them to be transmitted through every available media, posted with clickbait titles all over the web and commented by thousands of users worldwide.

In the London of old, secrets were a much more lucrative business. They didn't bubble so often to the surface but were flushed down like waste into the sewers, dissipating silently into everyday squalor without echo, without scandal.

“Welcome, friend!” Lau bows. “You look like just the type to do well around here.”

“And how do I look like?”

“Rich,” says the woman clinging to his arm, her voice as blank as her face. She has golden eyes and full breasts that bulge indiscreetly beneath a snug _qipao_ from purple silk.

“Thank you,” I answer, smiling, “but I intend to keep it that way.”

Lau gestures for me to follow, long robes sweeping like a wedding veil across the floor. Friday night has yielded an ample, cosmopolitan crowd, dressed in black ties and evening gowns and Chinese garments, a peculiar jumble taken out of yet another film or another century altogether. We take a side path behind dividers, but I am still noticed; five people turn their heads to follow my passage through the room, and I know that the unearthly red shadows do little to blur my features. I suppose it could have been worse; two of my patients were addicted to gambling and I half-expected to spot them here, feeling up waitresses and squandering riches against their therapist's explicit advice.

Whatever my five observers think as they look me curiously up and down, I can think of one thing only: have any among them been to Earl's Court? Who in this crowd has touched Ciel? There is so much my eyes can take in but they look for only that, as though it were something that would manifest itself as a palpable trait – some bright, beacon-like imprint in one's aura, or a mark as clear as a scar. To have tasted that lovely flesh, even if inert and unwilling; to have kissed those sweet lips, even if cold and pursed shut; to have debauched the innocence that has now flourished into something far less pristine... it should show, shouldn't it? To have had what I could not have myself, what I could not stop craving?

They're lucky I can't know.

We arrive at an empty alcove, private and perfect for shooting me without disturbing the patrons. Lau settles himself among an abundance of colourful cushions and picks up the hose of a gilt, oriental water pipe sitting erect on the lounge table. His companion, plastered to him like a brooch, crawls into his lap and fixes me with a blunt, expressionless stare. 

“Now... you say you were a friend of Madame Red's?”

“That's right.”

“Poor thing, I miss her! I've heard all about what happened. She brought so much life to this place, you know? Beat all the men at drinking and laughed louder than all of them combined.”

I send him a knowing smile, dismissing the skimpily-clad waitress headed toward me with a tray. “Didn't have much in the way of luck, though, did she? At poker in particular.” 

Lau measures me through the thin slits of his eyes. I can barely tell they're open. “You're that shrink, aren't you. I heard gossip of a shrink. No one but the regulars would know she used to come here, and you're no regular.” He brings the pipe hose to his lips. “Some peculiar shrink you are too, seeking me out here on your own when I was kind enough to leave you be. Hmm.”

“Hmm,” repeats the woman and crosses her long legs, slowly and shamelessly as if to seduce, granting me a first-class view of the gun holster and sheathed dagger she kept strapped to her shapely thigh. She winks at me, features frozen in permanent poker-like nothingness, as though she were capable of even less emotion than I. 

I look up at Lau. “Do you remember the last time she came here?”

“Why, it was all very sudden. I didn't even get to see her. She handed her last share to Xiao Li—I mean the bouncer—and told him that we were done.”

“And you just left it at that?”

“Why not? Our business was clearly concluded. It was good money, but all good things come to an end. I kept her monitored for a time and everything seemed more or less in order. Paths cross, paths diverge.”

Lau's bearing is light and personable – comical, even – but underneath that gaiety lurks vigilance and danger, a certain 'wolf in sheep's clothing' quality that I can relate to. 

“Speaking of paths, you left a breadcrumb trail right to your door. Her nephew could have identified your clients.”

He throws his arms wide. “I'm still here, aren't I? Surely you didn't come here to question the way I do business? You're the shrink – how often do abused children speak openly of their abuse? They're scared, they repress it, they don't understand what's going on. And that's only if we don't drug them, and we always drug them. They don't remember a thing.” He speaks of drugged children as one might speak of cattle trade or chicken breeding – such refreshing remorselessness in such an ethically complex world. “Besides, have a look around; my clients are rich, they have good lawyers. An accusation is not enough.” 

_No photos and no taping. No permanent damage. Use a rubber_. In other words, leave no evidence behind. He's not stupid, he's clueless. Just as I thought.

“You simply have no clue what happened, do you?”

It's clear he doesn't like the sound of that question. I wouldn't, either. No one likes having simply no clue. 

“Madame Red was a troubled soul. I presumed her conscience had finally caught up with her.”

“No, something else had caught up with her. I'll tell you if—”

“I always reveal my cards last, dear Doctor.”

I build a little suspense, reclining confidently in my seat, basking in the exclusivity of my knowledge. 

“Angelina never gave your drugs to her nephew; she wanted him fully aware. He may not speak of it openly, true, but believe me when I say that he knew perfectly well what was going on and did not repress a single thing. And as much as I didn't come here to question your business tactics, you should really find a better way of monitoring your clients. Remember those three men you sent to Angelina just before she cut ties? They were members of a cult, likely Satanic. They burnt the boy's back and cut his throat, leaving scars. Not exactly according to the rules, was it?"

Lau's narrow eyes open just the littlest bit wider, but that's all he lets show of his surprise. He takes a deep drag of whatever is in the pipe, clouds of creamy smoke twirling and rolling unhurriedly from between his lips. He sits there silently for some time, smoke obscuring his pensive face, until he gathers himself with a quaint little chuckle and says, “He survived having his throat cut? What kind of a cultist doesn't know how to properly cut a throat?”

“That's what I was hoping you could tell me. Who were they?”

“ _They_? You don't get a ten-year-old to handle three grown men at once, I'm more thoughtful than that! I didn't send three, I sent one. And you're right, I had no clue about any cult.”

“All I want from you is a name.”

Lau bends forward, jovial manners abandoned, throwing an arm over his companion's lap. “I don't know what kind of game you're trying to play here, friend. You had everything to get me convicted and chose instead to dig up history and risk your life. How can I let you go, knowing what you know? How can I let _the boy_ go? You're loose ends.”

Ah, the wolf decided to bare his fangs. How scary. “Your loose ends have taken precautions. I have a confidant, who found you in no time at all, and I have a recording from Angelina's session that couldn't be more explicit. Should you prove inhospitable to me in any way or so much as look at the boy, my confidant will release the recording and point right to your thriving little venture. If you want to get convicted, that's one sure way for it to happen.” I browse through my array of smiles and select the one most suitable, friendly yet not quite reaching my eyes. “I can assure you, however, that I had meant this visit to be nothing more than mutual courtesy. No blackmail, no threats, no police... a simple _quid pro quo_. You play your games, I continue to play mine. Let this be the last we see or hear of each other.”

Lau recites something in Mandarin, slow and melodious like a verse of poetry. Having built a little suspense of his own, he smiles his vulpine smile and leans away. “You're lucky I have good memory. Your Satanist is Azzurro Vanel, an Italian drug dealer. I haven't seen him since and I'm fairly sure it's a false name, but he has quite the conspicuous scar across his nose, if it helps.” He puffs on his pipe, releasing neat little hoops of smoke. “Ran-Mao, be a dear and see our guest out. Politely.”

***

Driving back to Hampstead, I think of Ciel; I haven't thought of much else these days. Not my experiment, not my Todestrieb, not my patients. Just Ciel and the little war he's been waging against me the entire week. He's completely shut me off – no more therapy, no late evening discussions, no chess or trips to town. He misses meals, goes off by himself and ignores everything I do or say. If he speaks, it's usually to insult me; if at home, he's always locked upstairs. Once more he reminds me of a cat, leery and hard to tame, bolting at the slightest hint of danger. 

What will he do, I wonder? When he meets an old friend? Because I will make sure there is nowhere to bolt. No turning tail and ducking into an alley.

I'd failed to coax him out of his shell and now it was time to try smashing it open, yanking him out by force. I've never really wanted a war, only surrender, and with this he'll have no choice but to surrender. He can hate strangers and vermin and the whole wide world, but I'm supposed to be the one and only exception. I need to redirect the beam of his contempt toward its origins, to rotate and steer it as far away from me as I only can. I need to give him a scapegoat to hate in my stead. 

Which will prevail: his weakness, or his hatred? If he screams, clutches at his throat and curls on the ground, I will shield him. I will help him back up. And if his hands clench into fists and his eyes flare up with the flames of his vindictive wrath, I shall become its instrument. I shall see that its bidding is fulfilled. But whichever prevails, whatever he does, there can be no more hiding behind walls or even corners, no locking himself up in lofty towers to seek shelter from the wretchedness below. It's all coming down and he will have no place left to run to, absolutely no one else to turn to but _me_. If not on trust, I will have to count once more on necessity to push him into my arms. 

And in the end, no matter the means, I always get what I want. It's just a matter of time.

Back in Hampstead, seated still in the warmth of my car, I stop at the driveway and look up at the silent house. There is an arrow of light winking through the drawn curtains, just by my desk in the study, where at half past midnight should be completely dark. I release my grip on the steering wheel and chuckle faintly below my breath. I've never seen Ciel use a computer – he adamantly keeps his distance from electronic devices of all kind – yet it would seem he was versed enough to bypass a fingerprint reader and hack my password. Or did he learn how to do it just this week, just for this?

I drive under the carport, turn off the engine and climb unhurriedly through the rear door for patients. Ciel must hear me come home but must not care; I find him staring fixedly at the screen of my laptop, face illuminated by the scattered glow of its ghostly light. His gaze is absent and glassy, but he hasn't been crying. His tears were a delicacy I had yet to be afforded.

“Ciel?” I call out. He doesn't even lift his eyes. Is this another episode of dissociation? I'm about to shake his shoulder when he finally answers – dull and apathetic, as though I were asking him if he's done his homework.

“There you are. Suppose you're about to lecture me on patient confidentiality and snooping around and so on and so forth... to spare you breath, know that I don't care.”

“What are you doing?”

A glimmer of dry, dark humour passes through his eye. “I was looking for underage pornography, of course. Instead I found a folder titled 'A. Dalles' and could hardly resist.”

Leaning back in the armchair, he finally honours me with a glance. I cannot tell what he's thinking or feeling or intending to do. Is he in any way affected? Sad, angry, shocked, all at once? Everything about him is thoroughly inscrutable. 

“Quite the story she told,” he says, inspecting his fingernails. “Surprisingly put-together. That's not how I remembered her, really; my mother used to say she had a potty mouth and couldn't string two sentences without a cuss. Half the bad words I know I'd learnt from her.” 

So many questions on the tip of my tongue. What was it like, listening to her confession? Hearing her voice, reliving it through her eyes? Do you forgive her? Did you even hate her to begin with? Or did you love her despite everything she did to you?

“Ciel.”

“What?” he snaps at me impatiently.

“Are you okay?”

He considers. “No. Would you like to hear what bothers me most, out of everything I've heard?”

It's almost teasing, the way he baits me and stalls the answer. He stands up and draws closer, looking me straight in the eye. 

“That the tape _stops_ , that's what bothers me. Why does it stop? Just what did you tell her? You gave her that drink, what else did you do? Is it your fault she killed herself?”

I summon all the honesty I can into my voice and upon my features. “I didn't say or do anything. I simply couldn't get her to stop crying.” 

Two more steps. He punctuates every word, voice barely above a whisper, while I trace unwittingly the movements of his lips.

“I don't believe a single word that comes out of your mouth anymore.”

Amid silence and midnight dark, it feels like the most intimate of confessions. Our gazes collide, charged with tension, but there is nothing to read from my eyes and there is nothing to read from his. He curves his mouth and withdraws a creased piece of paper from his jacket.

“I found it in her wallet. She kept it around all this time and didn't even cross out my face. Awfully touching, no?” He chuckles, tapping his finger against the photo. “All worn out too, as though she used it often to reminisce about happier times, as though deep down she still cared and was sorry... but that's not why it's worn out, is it? Now that I know what it's been used for, it makes me sick. She was right; it all had happened in another lifetime indeed.” He thrusts the photo into my chest and turns to leave the room. “Here, take it, see for yourself. Didn't I use to have the prettiest smile?”

I listen to his footsteps on the staircase and wait for his door to close—as if preparing to do something forbidden—and then I walk to my desk and flip on the lights. There it is, the proud edifice of the Louvre; there she is, so radiant in her glamorous red, grinning wide and honest from ear to ear; there they are, gallant and comely, the perfect husband and perfect wife; and there _he_ is, a tiny lovely thing, already with that brilliant gleam and imperial poise, looking into the camera with a pair of uniquely mismatched eyes, one a deep familiar blue and the other a ravishing violet so full of life. Such lightness there is about his shoulders, such aura of ease! Such happy obliviousness to the events of near and unmerciful future.

I touch my finger to his face. Yes, little one; I have certainly never seen a prettier smile.


	14. Chapter 14

It's one of those shops that still have a bell hanging above the entry. At five minutes to closing there is no customer nor vendor in sight, only rows of furniture and miscellaneous trinkets filling up every nook and cranny of the already cramped space. Frilly lampshades, marble figurines, gilt baroque frames and Florentine frescoes copied with careful care. I stroll around the shop, inhaling the mild yet unmistakable scent of age that hangs about the air, musk and dust and musty old wood. I prefer it to the soulless, factory smell of brand new furniture; I prefer scarred surfaces, scratched varnish and peeling paint. Years add flaws and flaws tell stories. 

A mumbled greeting reaches my ears and I turn to face Azzurro Vanel, also known as Marco Ferrara, the search for whom should have been like searching for one tiny needle in a haystack – but wasn't. By miraculously convenient chance, my Italian Satanist turned out to be none other than Grell Sutcliffe's former drug dealer. Strange thing, to be able to say 'it's a small world' while living, of all places, in London. 

He wears his hair long and trims his stubble into a short, unappealing goatee. He's dressed in a rich yet tasteless pinstripe suit and has a broad scar slanting from his forehead all across the bridge of his nose. I don't wonder what story it could tell; my nostrils flare at his very sight. _Vermin_ , I hear Ciel’s voice inside my head, and I combat the urge to snatch the iron candelabra within my reach and splatter his brains across the fake Botticelli behind his back. It's no novelty, this urge; my Todestrieb tempts me all the time. I get my urges and whims the way others get a sudden craving for strawberry sundae or a mug of cold beer after work, yet as I look at Azzurro Vanel also known as Marco Ferrara, my familiar urge tugs at me in some unfathomably unfamiliar way. It takes me longer to bite back, this elusive new form, all while Vanel ogles me suspiciously and repeats his greeting:

“Signore? Good afternoon?”

There – he needs only to open his mouth and already I am irked. Doesn't he know the English word 'sir'?

“Yes, sorry, hello. So many things to look at.”

“Looking for anything specific?”

“Well, not quite. What brings me here specifically is the unfortunate circumstance of death, I’m afraid,” I say, watching for the clench in his jaw. How many throats has he slit in sacrifice? How many bullets has he fired in his dealings? How many 'unfortunate deaths' has he caused and which one sprang first to his mind? 

“Grandfather,” I clarify. “Italian.”

“Ah.” His shoulders drop. “ _Riposi in pace_.”

I let out a snicker. “I don’t think it’s peace he’ll be resting in, necessarily, given that I intend to sell off his precious ancestral furniture. It’s more of a 'rolling in the grave' kind of situation, if you will. Especially if I get a rough deal out of it.”

“You need a trained eye,” says Vanel with a confident smirk.

“Right, exactly, but the issue here is that a lot of trained eyes have been saying a lot of different things. The pieces need renovation, yes—but the provenance, year, price? No agreement. As a layman, I find myself increasingly at a loss.” I click my tongue, continuing to look around the shop until my gaze stops on a sturdy, neoclassic armoire from cross-banded walnut. I wonder how much heroin had been smuggled inside it and how much of it was bought with my money to be shot up Grell's veins. I also think it would look good in the guestroom upstairs. 

Vanel tracks my every move. “A man of modern tastes?”

“My tastes are measured in zeroes on my bank account, and sentiment brings no profit. You'll find it's a timeless approach to life, not just modern. But if you happen to share that approach, I'm afraid I'm going to have to look for another set of trained eyes.”

His laugh is almost candid. “No, no, my approach is passion. Italians are known for passion, taste, and their passion for taste.”

Taste? Not with that suit on. Passion, however... he has deep, abundant reserves of the wicked sort of passion I should feel drawn to, but I feel repelled. Everything about him puts me off, from the sound of his voice to the way his thumbs stick out of his pockets. He is a flaw, but not in the same sense a graze on patinated wood is a flaw; he is a pesky speckle on freshly cleaned glass, a blotch of ink on snow-white parchment, an ugly stain of grease on favourite trousers—in the sense that I want to wipe, erase, and wash away.

“Passion sounds good. My grandfather was certainly passionate about those chunks of old wood he saw fit to leave me in his will.” I reach inside my wallet to procure a card with my other number and other name. “I'm always busy, but equally eager to get rid of said chunks cluttering my basement. Please give me a ring whenever you're free to come have a look.”

***

I leave the antique shop with Vanel's own card and a quizzical sense of unfulfillment. He won't wait long to reach out – I made it clear that time is money and money is the only thing I am after – yet the pocket where I keep my other phone suddenly feels heavier. Beset by impatience, I am met with a need to distract myself with something petty, and I cannot think of anything pettier than dinner with Bard and Ronald. I ring home – the landline I couldn't be bothered to remove – and have to dial three more times before Ciel decides to pick up.

“I won't be home for dinner,” I say.

“Fine,” he says. 

Dinner. That's all our conversations lately amount to. He's becoming a ghost in my home the way he'd been in Earl's Court, fading into the background and flitting unnoticed in the corner of my eye. But all he wants is to be a ghost, evanescent and forgotten, living by himself and for himself in this spectral quasi-existence – not quite life and not yet death, suspended between the outside world and his own remote kingdom. He would rather withstand all plight silently instead of leaving the blessed solitude of that kingdom, and would sooner suffer more injustice than be heard or seen. He would rather risk more abuse than make the smallest fuss. 

Stuck at red light on my way to the restaurant, I watch a group of kids parade laughing through the street. They couldn't be more than sixteen and couldn't look more untroubled, as if their only concerns were math tests and silly crushes and hitting enough likes on social media. Worlds, worlds apart from Ciel, who had bigger troubles than what to wear on a first date or how his favourite show was going to end, he had more troubles than years. Twice he's escaped death and survived the tyranny of adults only to find himself at the mercy of my protean whims, and my whim was to put him in the same room as Azzurro Vanel and watch what happens. Oh, the poor thing just couldn't catch a break.

I park in front of the restaurant Ronald had strongly suggested we go to. Elegant, ideal for candlelit dinner, the kind of locale where fiancés go down on one knee while the waiters bring in flowers and champagne and everyone else starts clapping and cheering—but it worked for ripping off a rich friend just as well as it did for planning a proposal, and I don't complain because it serves Italian. Exactly what I've been in the mood to eat.

Ronald's grin is broad and unapologetic as he orders the priciest thing on the menu; Bard is unusually quiet and, as usual, underdressed. For once I try to pay them actual attention, but my impatience drifts doggedly on the edge of my consciousness and eludes petty distractions. What's going to happen once they are put in the same room? Ciel told me that two of the cultists took off their masks, that he remembered their faces better than he did his own parents', that he could hear their voices not only in nightmares but whispering to him insidiously in the light of day. Would Vanel recognise Ciel, however, after three whole years? Just another kid, just another lamb for slaughter? No, he didn't think him good enough for even that; a sick lamb, bad sacrifice. A useless thing, a flaw.

My fist tightens around the fork.

“What's up with the two of you today? Grim and grimmer,” says Ronald, looking between Bard and myself. I, for one, know exactly what is up with Bard; he's overworked and losing faith, both in the justice system and in himself. He sleeps badly, eats badly, smokes two packets a day and by now has probably resorted to hookers. Bard, to me, is an open book – a book with predictable plot twists, shallow characters and banal ending. 

“I mean it, you gentlemen look like shite. Let's fix that.” Ronald snaps his fingers at the waiter, earning himself disproving looks from nearby couples. “Bring us your best bottle of vodka, son.”

Ronald's 'son', by my estimate well in his fifties, demonstrates a façade of commendable patience. “Certainly,” he says, as though the purpose of his life was to put up with condescending customers. I suppose his façade is not much unlike my own, with the way he must conceal his true sentiments behind a servile smile and make sure his thoughts never transcribe into words. Were he to scoff at Ronald for snapping his fingers and ask who the fuck orders vodka in an Italian restaurant, there would be consequences. Everyone, to a degree, plays the same game as I. 

The vodka arrives in an ice bucket, and I cover my glass with a hand. 

“I'm driving.”

Ronald snorts. “That's the best excuse you can come up with? Good old Tanaka will pick up the car, problem solved. Now drink, rich bastard, it's your damn treat.”

I watch the waiter pour me a perfectly measured fifty millilitres of vodka. Humans seem to harbour a collective and erroneous assumption that liquor can make everything better. It's solace for a lonely evening, respite after a tiresome day, shot of good humour and liquid courage for those who lack it sober. It's what people resort to when stress or grief or reality in general becomes too much to bear, even if the next day they are left with the exact same problems and a pounding headache as the cherry on top. But what liquor does essentially and unfailingly, is remove boundaries. 

Need I say it's better for everyone if my boundaries remained intact?

We drink. Barely an hour and we have already gone through the entire bottle, enough to send Bard on a spree of self-pity and mundane complaints (of which I have not missed a single mark). I pay him no mind, watching lovestruck couples on their dates and anniversaries as I swallow shot after shot of vodka. I watch women in their chic cocktail dresses and designer heels, pecking sparsely at pastas and salads in-between sips of Chardonnay, moving about with the mannered, calculated grace of someone dining at the royal table. A lot of them watch me back, sneaking quick glances whenever their escorts aren't looking, trying to mask their distraction with fervent nods and sweet, overdone smiles. I pick up bits of their intimate conversations and find them just as full of pretense, low honeyed nothings that blend into the background drone of Italian ballads and Bard's slurred tirades. Ronald, in turn, seems bent on spending as much of my money as he can in one evening, snapping his fingers every now and again for the waiter to bring him another snack, another chaser, another bottle. The candle at our table has almost burnt out.

“We'll get you a girl another time, for now you're getting drunk,” he cuts into Bard's overly detailed account of how he ruined his last date. “Shall we?” He lifts his glass, spilling some of the vodka. “And whatever's eating at Dr Michaelis, I'm sure it's nothing that can't be handled in the same simple manner. Only difference is that he, at least, sure has no problems getting a girl.”

My whims are more complicated than that, I'm afraid. I take another swig, easing fluidly down my throat, crispy cold and leaving behind a bitter, satisfying burn. I can feel a restless buzz stirring in my limbs, a miasma-like haziness slowly beginning to cloud my mind. It is a tempting risk—the sort I've lately acquired a dangerous taste for—to keep downing glass after glass until I lose my inhibitions, until I care no more for consequences and yield to the one true side of my nature. I can never stand still; I always need to be taking another step forward, and I am curious to see what I would become unable to stop myself from doing.

I push my glass out of reach. My reason is still there, fighting for survival alongside my patience.

“Remember when I told you about countertransference?” I ask, looking into Bard's rueful, unshaven visage. 

“Caught it bad, huh?” He huffs, fiddling with his napkin. “Can't you take your own advice? Just do your job?”

“Doesn't always work, it seems.”

“Ha, you said it first.”

My gaze drops. “I can't stop thinking about one of my patients. I'm afraid I'll fail him like I'd failed Angelina.”

Ronald rolls his eyes. “Angsty, much? Take some honest advice from a lawyer: not everyone can be saved, some cases are lost from the start. You're a shrink, not a God.”

If I were a God, I would be the God from Old Testament. I would send plagues and great floods and force fathers to kill their sons. I am the furthest thing from a saviour and I never intended to save Ciel—for even if I did, it wasn't as though he could be renovated like a piece of worn furniture, patched-up with glue and topped with shiny enamel. No, his flaws were there to stay. 

“It's not that. You don't understand.” I scrunch up my features into a pinpoint image of martyrdom. “I've heard so much shit from patients that I was sure nothing could still surprise me. I've always handled that emotional baggage rather well, but _this_ — this is too much even for me. It keeps me up at night.”

I can tell it piques their interest. The way they see me, I'm stoicism personified. Calm, rational, dependable. I'm not a man easily disturbed or coaxed into confessions; and vodka or not, I certainly never blab about my patients.

I pretend to weigh words while my eyes bore invariably into Bard. “Have you ever run across a case suggesting the involvement of a Satanic cult?”

Ronald's immediate response is a burst of cynical laughter. “You taking the piss? We're not in the eighties, devil worship is a hoax. Hollywood fiction, rebellious teens, old church ladies spinning paranoid fantasies... that's all it's ever come down to. There's no underground Satanic mafia—if there was, don't you think NCA would've caught a whiff of it? Maybe your patient's a bit off his trolley? Like, full-on confabulation? Maybe you've tried one of those, ah, dubious techniques of recovering memories?”

“I'm not some inept college shrink, Ronald,” I all but growl, feeling an authentic spark of anger. I don't like people questioning my expertise. “Brain scans show no anomalies in his frontal lobe. And memories can be fabricated, sure, but not scars. Not the kind that he has.”

“Okay, cool, why not go to the police? I know they can be useless,” he chances a quick look at Bard, “but worth at least a shot, no?”

“I've tried convincing him, but he wouldn't listen. My own hands are tied, I can't file an official report without his consent. But then I can't simply leave it be, either. Just thinking they're out there, walking around with impunity after everything they've done...” I add a dramatic tremble to my voice, pinning my tortured gaze somewhere above Ronald's shoulder. Woe is me, a righteous man pained by glaring injustice, so powerless in the face of human evil.

Bard caves in. If there is anything he can relate to, it's the struggle between duty and virtue. 

“Look, I don't know about an entire cult, but there have been some singular cases that I guess could be linked to Satanism if you squint. You know, details, like an upturned cross here, a desecrated Bible there, a bunch of stolen Eucharistic hosts...” he sucks his teeth, tracing a finger through the cold droplets on our bottle of Belvedere, “also a few dead priests who may or may not have had weird occult symbols carved into their skin.”

Ronald lets out a quiet whistle. “You boys sure manage to hide a lot from the media.”

“Yeah, cause the last thing we need is Satanic panic based on flimsy evidence and—”

“Carved-up priests are _flimsy?_ Got it.”

“We were looking into it. But now there's better things to do.”

I raise my brows. “Better as in waiting for the vigilante to drop another body?” 

Bard's lips press into a thin line; I've touched a nerve. The vigilante remained a police priority, even when gradually losing his reign over the media. It was high time I gave London my sixth victim: Henry Barrymore, the king of illegal dog fights, laundering his blood money in real estate business. Personally I would be glad to see all dogs put down, but I chose him because a great many people seem to value the lives of dogs above those of fellow humans, which might just be the thing to win me a proper round of public applause. Curious, aren't they, the double standards of humanity.

Except I don't care about any of it, not now. Ciel has usurped all of my thoughts.

Ronald snaps his fingers, suddenly enlightened, making our waiter turn his head with a frown. “Hey, speaking of the devil – maybe he'll take care of them! No offense, but he seems better at sniffing out the baddies than dear old Met police. I say quit worrying and leave it to our own morbid superhero.”

Thank you, Ronald, for touching an even deeper nerve. Bard glares at his flattened napkin and his brows crease once more in that peculiar, pensive frown that seems to appear whenever he tries to give something some thought. He needs to regain at least a semblance of faith in the justice system and in himself. 

“Okay, so freelancing. Where would you start?”

Oh, you won't find them, but you can at least pave the way. You are my plan B in case Vanel fails to lead me straight to the source, so you'd better not muck it up.

“Dig up those old cases. And look into child disappearances within the last five years.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want a little more context, look up Satanic panic/Satanic ritual abuse conspiracy (it's what Ronald refers to, and therapists were a big part of it)
> 
> Also no Ciel this chapter, but I promise he'll be in the next one ^_^


	15. Chapter 15

The lights of London blur before my eyes the entire way to Hampstead. The bill was staggering and so were Bard and Ronald as they bid me goodnight and mounted into their respective taxis. I am mostly sober by the time I reach home, but as I follow a strip of light into the main parlour I see that someone else is decidedly not—and that he doesn't seem to care I caught him drinking any more than he cared I'd caught him breaking into my computer. 

I step further inside. Ciel is up on the sofa, clothes unkempt and feet propped leisurely on the coffee table, trying to watch some old French film on some obscure French channel. On the ground lies a corkscrew, tossed aside after an apparently fierce combat with a bottle of Moscato d'Asti, the sweetest wine I had in my cellar – now three-quarters empty.

“I tried the whisky from your decanter, at first. Disgusting swill,” Ciel says at my sight, and not even inebriation has managed to impair the clarity of his speech. It shows, instead, in the slackness of his limbs and the smoky, half-lidded gaze he cannot seem to focus too long on one spot. His world must be swimming, doubling, jumping before his eyes.

I measure him critically from head to toe. “Well, party's over. Think you can brave the stairs?”

Ciel peers askance at the bottle, likely wondering if he should try to defy me, but he is in no condition for defiance and puts down his glass to motion me closer.

“No, carry me.”

He really _is_ drunk, to quite literally throw himself into my arms after two weeks of treating me like a leper. I step over and lift him from the sofa, carefully as though he were made of fine china, while he loops his arms around my neck and studies me from up close, the closest we've yet been. I can smell the Moscato on his breath and the lingering scent of herbal shampoo on his hair.

“You stink like a Russian drunk,” he says, wrinkling his nose, “and I liked your other cologne a lot better.”

I smile. “Note taken.” 

His head drops to my shoulder as we leave the parlour and cross the dim hall. Such a human thing to do, drowning one's sorrows, the most predictable and unsophisticated way to cope. I would have expected it of absolutely everybody but him, and I have no doubts that he will condemn himself later for succumbing to such a lowly temptation. He was the one who governed his sorrows, not the other way around, coping not with intoxication but with dignity and defiance, neither of which could he invoke when addled with liquor. And he governed his demons, or tried to, like a monarch struggling to keep his unruly subjects from riot, hanging with all might onto his declining, despotic reign. For now it shall end in a small mutiny quelled overnight, but brewing closer was a full-scale rebellion which he was powerless to stop—as powerless as a sand castle facing against a great tide.

I shall be there as his lone defender, of course.

Halfway up the staircase, he suddenly cracks up with laughter – the grotesque sort of laughter that reminds me of the way his aunt had laughed when she confessed to me her gravest sin.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. Just that the last time someone carried me across the stairs, my throat was slashed open and burnt skin was peeling off my back.” 

I make no comment. An image resurfaces in my mind, like a memory, of Angelina Dalles barrelling down a flight of stairs with her dying nephew's limp body in hands, one under his bruised little knees and the other around his blistering back. I imagine him as I imagined him before we met, as a gaunt and tortured orphan bleeding out on his aunt's crimson clothes. He laughs at it now, if not with humour then certainly with bitterness, as though he's left it all behind; but I think he's stuck in that moment still, however hard he tries not to look back. Tonight, at least, it certainly seems to have caught up.

“I remembered it while listening to the tape,” Ciel says, all laughter gone in an instant, and as we walk through the dark corridor he adds, somewhat idly, toying with a lock of hair on my nape, “I hated her and I hate you too.”

Just like that, in a drunken little sentence, he tells me more than he's told me in long weeks. My mind throngs with possibilities – questions that may finally be answered, ways to further pull his tongue – but Ciel sees it all coming and puts a hand over my mouth. “Shut up,” he grumbles, refusing to let go until I set him down on the edge of his bed. At first he stares drowsily at the bathroom door, by my guess considering a shower, then reels slightly backward and commands, with only as much lordliness as he can still muster:

“I'm tired. Undress me.”

“I'm not your servant.”

“Ha, no such luck. You're worse than that, you're nothing to me right now.”

I raise my brows. “That's an awful lot of attention to be giving _nothing_.”

“I'm drunk, have you noticed? Pissed. Sloshed. Legless. Smashed.” He giggles, such an odd sound to be coming from his mouth. “Liquor appears to make me benevolent toward lowlifes, so enjoy it while it lasts.”

Oh, I intend to. Never would I ever miss the smallest opportunity for touch. I intend to pounce on it and take from it as much as I can, bleed it dry and begin hunting for another. I liked having him close – nuzzled up warmly to my breast – and I like the idea of undressing him even more. 

I commence with his eye-patch, untying the thin string at the back of his head in one, effortless pull. Then, sleeve by sleeve, I take off the dark green blazer of Weston uniform and toss it unfolded at the armchair by his bed, where I've sat during those restless nights he woke me with screams. I start unbuttoning his shirt, and he surveys my every move like he doesn't trust me to remain decent; but my hands are as slow and deliberate as if performing a delicate ritual, and the only indecencies I commit are the ones I commit in my thoughts. Still, among the uncanny quiet of the room, where every smallest exhale and rustle of fabric resounds like a noise, it feels almost as if my thoughts can be heard. Are his own as fuzzy as his gaze? Or have they retained the same lucidity as his speech? I undo the last button and slip the shirt off his shoulders, ever so briefly allowing my eyes to roam over his bare skin. He really does look like he's made from fine china; like he would shatter if tipped just slightly over the edge, though I know it would take more force than that to break him. How many more cracks could I make before that happened?

I shall find out soon enough, I suppose. For now I must behave.

I drag his nightshirt from under the pillow and pull it over his head, covering him up while I take off his bottoms. Ciel looks groggy, as if swept and repelled by sudden dizziness, closing his eyes to immediately snap them back open. He flops finally onto the mattress and lies there with hair spilt across the pillow, blinking up dazedly at the ceiling.

“You know, all things considered, this does feel pretty good. I think I get the appeal,” he says, at last with a faint yet undeniable slur. I reach underneath his nightshirt and hook my fingers below the waistband of his trousers, feeling his belly flutter under the touch.

“Yes, well… wait until you wake up tomorrow.”

He chuckles, lifting his hips while I ease down his underwear. “Ooh, the dreaded hangover. Will you nurse me to health, o faithful servant of mine?”

I pause at his tone. I find no other way to describe it but flirtatious; sultry, even, paired with the pliant way he's stretched upon the sheets. All I have left to undress are his socks – a black blend of silk and cotton ending just below his knees. 

“I think not,” I tell him, seizing one slender leg. “Perhaps you ought to learn a thing or two about consequences. Suffer due punishment for your thoughtless behaviour.”

His glossy lips twirl into a lazy, coquettish smile. “Yes, I’m sure you could think up a variety of ways to punish me accordingly... _Sebastian_.”

I stop still. The name feels like a hot stab to my abdomen and I want it moaned, screamed, choked on. I slide off one sock down the slope of his calf, too slowly and taking too much care to drag my fingers along the softness of his skin, lingering too long around his ankle and the bridge of his slim foot. I don't want to let go, I want to make the same journey but _up_ , farther and preferably with my tongue, until I press my cheek to the plump inside of his thigh and breathe not air but only his scent— except that I can't, I'm still behaving, still pulling on my thin _thin_ leash. I lay his leg on the sheets and reach for the other, watching him watch me unsteadily below drooping eyelids and fluttering lashes, his blue iris now nearly as hazy as the violet.

Agony.

 _Should_ as opposed to _want_ – how often one must choose between the two! It's a burden I share with all of humanity, this primeval struggle of sentiment versus reason that in my case, bleached of sentiment as I am, comes down to navigating the wild fancies of my capricious nature. And yet for all the luscious temptations I have had thus far to resist, I find it particularly difficult to resist the urge to unzip my fly and use the boy's body in every indecent way I can think of—to press his thighs together and thrust myself in-between them, or to rub my cock on every inch of his milky skin and cum all over, or to keep pushing in and out of that pink, parted, wine-sweet mouth until I sate the wanton burn in my loins. I shouldn't do it this way, but I want to; predators of all kind, however keen of the hunt, can have a tough time denying a tasty morsel when it presents itself so readily for their taking. Such delectable prey, having eluded me doggedly for so long, now lies dosed and defenseless and dares even to tease me; how can I not at least consider, if only this once, to face the consequences I have evaded all my life? I really shouldn't but I really want to fuck him—just lift his legs as far as they would bend and give him no more than two fingers, no more than spit, before stuffing him full of my cock and taking him every which way at once, because how could I decide on just one? He would be too docile from wine to resist me and his senses too numb to feel much pain, and he wouldn't scream but only whimper weakly at the wall or at the ceiling, he would be _perfect_.

The temptation is so hard to conquer that my leash almost snaps and my mask, so rarely escaping my control, must slip and reveal the agony of lust wreaking havoc upon my body—for Ciel sees it and chooses this precise moment to slide his bare leg between my thighs.

“Ha. Got you, motherfucker,” he drawls, this time not with disgust but with triumph, with venomous pleasure. “Or is your cock so hard because of my 'unhealthy template of sexuality', hmm?”

My lips twitch. Is that what this is all about? He lost the fight in the kitchen and had to prove his right through all available means? Sly, intractable brat. 

“If you're calling me names again, I thought we'd agreed on 'perverted vermin'?”

“Yes, but isn't that too lenient? Does it not sound more like a pet name? English—no, human tongue in general—lacks means to describe exactly how sick you are, and believe me when I say that I've looked.”

“What would you call yourself then, to be taunting me in this manner? Because I would call you a hypocrite.”

“And I would call myself drunk.”

“A drunk hypocrite, in that case. Not mutually exclusive.”

Ciel snorts, then yawns, then looks at me with sudden and stark solemnity, devoid wholly of the drunken playfulness that has driven me so mad.

“Are you going to do something?”

I want to counter his question – if I were to do something, what would _you_ do? – but I can tell he is too weary not only to fight back but to so much as think of what happens once he sobers. Besides, I think I know what he would do. He would not let his debasement go unpunished, not this time, if simply out of the rage that I know lies in plenitude within his slight yet tenacious little body. It's not so much a question of 'if', but of 'how'. Would he find a quiet way to sabotage my reputation? Or would he go all out and start a riot of his own, relinquish his pride and finally make a fuss? Would he abandon the transparent identity of a ghost and manifest himself as a helpless, bestially abused child? I cannot predict if he would trust his aunt, failed as he had been by family in the past, but I do know that Mrs Midford would move heaven and hell and all of Great Britain to see me put to justice. My consequences would take form of a public outcry and an army of top lawyers to battle my own – but whatever the means, I am sure Ciel Phantomhive would not rest until I was well and truly destroyed.

So I don't ask him anything. “No,” I only say, lifting the covers so he can burrow himself underneath. 

He takes this without relief, just dull acceptance and overpowering exhaustion. “Well aren't you a saint,” he says, giving me a last glance over the shoulder before, without so much as a 'goodnight', he sinks at once into drunken slumber.

I sit there beside him for a longer while, listening to his ponderous breathing, calming the flow of my raging blood. I smooth the duvet on his back and cannot help but laugh a little into the quiet of the room.

“You play it off like you planned it but the truth is you simply slipped, didn't you? Lost the ground under your feet, yes, it happens. Couldn’t focus on your books and couldn't seek my help so you just took the easiest way out.” I pause, as if expecting an answer; but Ciel does not stir, immersed in his stuporous sleep. “You can’t get her words out of your head, can you? She said she hated you. Wished you had died instead of your parents. Didn't give you Lau's drugs because she wanted you to feel every second of torture and shame. She had a gun and didn’t lift a finger to protect you. When she carried you down the stairs, it was to selfishly salvage her own skin and nothing more. But most of all, you can’t forget the sound of her wailing—how it blared through the laptop speakers in my dark study, loud and raw and so painfully real. Isn't that why you drank?” I smile and rise to my feet, halting with my hand on the light switch. “I hung her to have you all to myself, you know. Don't shut me out now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's going to be a longer break before the next chapter because I'm having a major block right now ;-; Sorry!


	16. Chapter 16

At the word 'therapy', some will invoke the image of a troubled individual lying on a chaise longue with hands twined upon his or her stomach, delivering a sad monologue at the ceiling while the therapist stares at the clock and doodles senselessly in his or her notepad. 

It's not true. But with Irene Diaz, I must say the call is close.

Monologues are the cornerstone of our sessions, sometimes sad but mostly peeved, the only treatment for her neuroticism that has yielded any fruit. The clock is always against me and I have the recorder as my only ally, keeping dutiful track of her opera repertoire and marital squabbles, noting for me the names of her cousins, girl-friends and West Highland white terriers—all of which she had more than anyone should ever want or need. 

People listened to her with bated breath during concerts, and she has come to expect the same treatment off the stage. My strategy is to hum and nod along with practised interest, maintaining sensible intervals between each hum and nod so as not to spoil the flow of her inane rhetoric. To maximise my input, I may occasionally throw in a smart quote or an improvised, motivating speech to help her out of an impasse, and though it tends to sound like pseudo-spiritual drivel straight from a trashy self-help book about midlife crisis, Irene always seems greatly impressed by my therapeutic wisdom. It's not altogether a bad arrangement; I like my work to be challenging and my time to be well-spent, but if she chooses to pay me a pretty penny for what could be just as well achieved by one of her dogs or girl-friends, so be it. 

If only the hands of the clock could move a bit faster.

I may not doodle, but I do have a habit of staring through the window above her shoulder. Halfway through March came a thaw and torrential rains, showering London with as much ferocity as earlier the January snow. Watching the furious downpour I think of Ciel, Bard's freelance cult-hunt and my lecture for the psychology congress in Paris – all while she prattles, on and on, about her sister's upcoming wedding and how the good-for-nothing clod she calls a husband got drunk last weekend and how her vocal coach dared imply she should improve her German accent when she lived in Germany for two years and that was where she met her good-for-nothing husband and then finally how smart I am not to have married – and although I listen to that stream of consciousness with a minimum of sustained attention, I do notice once it's interrupted by the quiet sound of a vibrating phone.

Mrs Diaz blinks, flow broken. “Oh, is that yours?”

Of course it's mine; her ringtone is a terrible midi rendition of Bach's Violin Partita which she never puts on silent. It's mine, and I have been waiting for this call long enough to have come up with more than one plan for kidnapping.

Others would describe the arrival of a long-anticipated moment with words like 'uncontained excitement', 'nervousness' or 'leaping heartbeat'. Myself, after almost two weeks of anticipation, naturally feel nothing of the sort – but I do feel _something_. Wakefulness, I think, as if I've downed two shots of espresso or taken a stimulant. I feel greed, and even more impatience, and that devious thrill I get before scoring a whim—except undercut by something I cannot quite label, some odd twinge in an odd place I have no time to inspect any closer.

I take out the buzzing phone and shoot Mrs Diaz a remorseful, 'puppy-eyed' look.

“I'm terribly sorry, do you mind if I take this? It's my emergency number.”

Normally she would take grave offense, but I have an effect on people that makes it hard for them to refuse me. 

It works especially well on women in an unhappy marriage.

“Of course, go ahead, I can wait!”

I hurry outside, close the doors and lean against the frame.

“Good afternoon, Mr Ferrara.”

“Signor Landers. Is your grandfather's furniture still cluttering your basement?”

“Sure is.”

“I could use a couple of new arrivals. How busy are you today?”

I glance at my wristwatch. “You happen to have perfect timing. I'm off in twenty minutes,” I lie, opening the contact list on my business phone to search out Mr Redmond, my next appointment, who was about to receive a call with 'deepest apologies' for an 'urgent cancellation'. 

“Well then, what is your address?”

“Ah, are you at the shop?”

“Sure am.”

“I'm not far, I can pick you up,” I say. Whatever happens, I don't want his car anywhere near Hampstead. “My place is quite tricky to find, anyway.”  
  
Vanel hesitates – as he should, in his profession, at the prospect of getting into a stranger's car – likely trying to recall if there was anything suspicious about the fetching businessman who came into his shop to rid himself of family heirlooms.

“Sounds fine by me. See you, signore.”

I slip back into the office. Mrs Diaz, alarmed by my worry-stricken features, generously offers to add the remaining minutes to our next session. And as I leave through the front door, car keys in hand, I see Ciel coming slowly down the left wing of the stairs – oblivious. Always getting ambushed by fate.

He looks in my direction, but his gaze goes straight through me. As if I were the ghost, not he.

***

“Blasted London weather,” Vanel says in greeting, drenched after the short walk from his shop to my car. “Only way is to keep an umbrella strapped to your belt all year, I guess. It's at times like these that I miss Italy.”

I hum in agreement and roll off the pavement. We don't chat; I keep my eyes trained on the road and Vanel keeps his on the cracked screen of his phone. My heart beats steadily, but I don't think I am calm; I know well my default state of emotional unbeing, and this is something entirely else. That odd, unidentified twinge is sure to be the root of it, swelling like a mild headache swells into a throbbing, insufferable migraine.

I let it be. Maybe it's one of those small aches that pass when ignored.

We push through central traffic and the jam seems to have no end. At the last crossing in Marylebone, in the last moment before I drive past, the light turns red and condemns me for two idle minutes of toiling thoughts. I crank up the radio until my ears pick up bits of the weather forecast, still barely audible, announcing more deluge for the rest of the week. The news of future rain are drowned out by the rain beating presently against the hood of my car, each droplet heavy like hail, knocking at the windscreen as if trying to get inside.

A strangely deafening sound.

I look outside and see tides of grey figures hunched under a sea of umbrellas, looming indistinctly through thick jets of rain battering upon them from a ceiling of leaden clouds. And this is the London that I like, lightless and plunged into all-encompassing gloom, veiled in ashen fog that seeps into every cranny like it might never lift—but its dismal charm is lost on me today, overshadowed by the events I had orchestrated toward an uncertain finale, events that were waiting to unfold just a little further beyond the crossing. 

Left, I'm supposed to go left. Any time now, just one more minute, just as soon as the light turns green.

My gaze strays inevitably to the passenger side. Vanel is busy typing a message I cannot make out from this angle, but I do see clearly his jagged cuticles and the speck of dirt under the nail of his left thumb. His skin is dry, hands hairy, lips chapped. He has blackheads on the side of his nose and his eyebrows could use a plucking. I hate his cologne and so would Ciel, this pungent freshness of citrus that lingers under his rain-wet stink. And is that the same horrendous suit from before? It's hard to tell. I can see only a trench coat too thin for March and a pair of Chelsea boots with pointed toes. I see only the mud they have splattered over my custom-fitted mats. 

Filth.

Wherever I look, I see filth. All of him is filthy and ugly and wrong. So I look away, and my mind's eye evokes instead the image of Ciel. That glimpse of him I'd caught before leaving – chin high, gaze imperious, one hand placed on the banister – was he not sublime? Was he not pristine? Yes, every inch of him worthy of worship. To now think that this lowbred mongrel will look at him with those drab eyes, speak to him in that ill-accented voice, might try to touch him with his dirty, calloused paws... _again_.

Something grips me, and this time I recognise it without fail. I think I've been feeling it all along; since the rusty bell rang above my head and I smelled old wood and heard a voice calling behind my back. It has wormed its way under my skin, this hate, and awakened what I had put to sleep for the winter, what I had long since given a name. It has been summoning me, and I always try to answer. Don't I?

It's loud now, _everything_ is so loud.

The blurred radio chatter and the drumming of rain; the rhythmic ticking of indicators going left, blinking green. The irregular tap-tap-tap of Vanel's fingers on the keyboard, fast and smooth then slow and stuttering, and why is no one's phone ever on silent? Even my own breath is loud, and the purr of the Aston Martin's powerful engine, and the slow creak of leather as my hands tighten their grip on the steering wheel – no gloves, just whitening knuckles on polished black, just short of a tremble.

And all of it in _fortississimo_ , louder than loud. A cacophonous symphony pulsing against the inside of my skull, splitting it apart as with a stonecutter's chisel. Even the wipers beat like a metronome to the hectic tempo, breaking up swarms of raindrops as they swing hypnotically from left to right. I stare ahead through the arch they clear on the windscreen and the light is still red, still saying stop, piercing bright like a beacon through the murky air. My vision smears and my head feels like it might explode if I don't give in right here and right now. 

I have to, I need to, it's unbearable. Trying to suppress it feels like struggling to stay above the surface of a stormy sea. I'm stuck in the middle while great, towering waves toss me mercilessly to and fro, pull me further and further down into dark, icy depths.

And I drown. When the light turns yellow I blink right and step hard on the gas, full throttle, swerving with impetus onto the neighbouring lane. The BMW driver behind me lets loose a furious honk, and the only thing that stops him from flipping me off is British politeness.

I feel the tickle of Vanel's questioning stare on my cheek.

“Sorry, wrong lane,” I tell him with a sweet smile, “head in the clouds.”

He shrugs and goes back to his texting. I set the new course, turn off the radio and ring the landline. Ciel doesn't pick up until the second dial.

“I won't be home for dinner,” I say.

“Fine,” he says.   


***

The house welcomes me with complicit silence.

A strange stillness reigns within its walls, as in a sanctuary where the rumble of central London is not allowed. The car horns and squealing brakes are all far off, all a blur, and were it not for the tranquil hum of falling rain outside the window, one could easily forget the entire world. I, for one, find my thoughts unable to drift anywhere beyond the bleak spaces of Ciel's old room. 

It's a dark room, with a darker past. The curtains that have kept so many shameful secrets have now been closed to keep one more, warding off prying eyes and banishing all light from the street. The chandelier's dimmed bulbs serve only to lengthen the shadows, and the fire I have kindled in the adjoining parlour casts only a weak, orange flicker across the carpet. 

But darkness can be easily dispersed; the emptiness is much more pervasive. All furniture has been covered with plastic sheets to keep dust at bay, stripping the rooms of all shape and soul they might have had when still lived in. Not one thing has changed since the day Ciel wheeled out his suitcase through the door, not even the locks. The townhouse has stood unoccupied for months on end, unable to find a buyer, and in my wait I took the time to wonder why not. Perhaps Angelina Dalles's suicide was rumoured to have happened in here, not the clinic; perhaps the dark past has saturated every corner of the house with a tangible air of haunting. Perhaps all who come here for viewing can sense it—like a putrid, unwashable stink that has settled into the foundations—but cannot quite put their finger on where it comes from. 

Or perhaps the house had simply been waiting for this moment. 

For was there a place more suited to end Vanel's life? I did seem to have some sense of the poetic justice that public had sought in my murderous acts as the 'vigilante'. I could not help but appreciate the fatefulness of what I was about to do—and what a word, _fatefulness_ , for me to be throwing about! I never believed in fate, the alignment of stars, nor any cosmic harmony that rewarded good deeds and punished the bad. If the universe had any laws, I was there to defy them. What goes around comes around, it is said, and yet no retribution has come my way after thirty years of sinning, no just deserts for all the sufferings I have pitilessly and happily caused. For the sake of dramatic effect, however, it could be said that karma has at long last come to collect its due from Azzurro Vanel, also known as Marco Ferrara, to punish him for all the misdeeds he had committed and for one misdeed in particular. It could be said that it was destiny, not violent whim, that had driven me to take a different turn at the crossing in Marylebone.

This wasn't supposed to happen, but it had been as easy as if I had planned it all along. The key to the front door was sitting at the bottom of my glove compartment, waiting for this day like the house itself. I told Vanel my umbrella had broken so that he would have to run from the rain, without stopping to look around and wonder if he'd ever been here, with all the obliviousness of cattle tumbling blindly to slaughter. And even if he did stop, dripping wet in the front hall, with a prickle of _déjà vu_ , I was only one step behind him. I struck a swift blow to the back of his head and dragged his heavy, motionless body all the way up the winding flight of stairs. I found the right room and there I flung him onto the plastic-covered bed in the middle, the very same upon which three years ago he committed his most fatal misdeed.

And once the fire was stoked, the zip ties fastened and the rope tied tight, I began my vigil. I sat down on the room's only chair by its only window and waited, while twilight lowered and the pelting rain dwindled down to a patter.

When Vanel finally wakes, he wakes with the calm of someone used to the idea of peril – be it used to facing peril or posing that peril himself. He doesn't scream, even though I haven't gagged him; he doesn't wrestle, not even to check how strong are the restraints. Where is the panic, the confusion? Dismay is fuel for that unparalleled high of dominance I get from killing, and I miss it. I want to exert that dominance over Azzurro Vanel in particular, and yet here he dares awaken with such infuriating composure, as though he had everything under control. 

No matter; I shall have more fun this way, crushing that composure. Kindling fear as I have kindled fire in the silent hearth next door, from a small spark to a potent, roaring blaze.

“Good evening. Do you recognise this place?” I say to him in Italian. His eyes roam all over the dusky room, but the bagged furniture and floral wallpaper and burgundy carpet are not enough to jog his memory.

“Hint one: we're in Earl's Court. Hint two: you came here in winter three years ago.”

His face brightens with belated recognition and his lips twist up into a malicious grin. “Ah. It does sound familiar. So this is revenge, huh? And it took you three years to find me?”

“It took me one phone call to find you,” I correct him coolly, glowering from above. “Now, you have kept me waiting long enough as it is, so I will cut straight to the chase. You're going to die either way, but you can still do yourself a favour and persuade me to make it less painful. All you need to do is tell me what I want to know.”

“Might as well skip the quiz. I'm not talking.”

“Ah, don't give up so fast, the questions aren't that hard. Here's one: what are the names of the other two men who came here with you that night?”

“Brother Asmodai and Brother Forneus,” he says like it's the most obvious thing in the world. I wait for an elaboration, but there is none. 

“Question two: how does this work?” I ask, pulling out the small device I'd taken out of his pocket: a black one-way pager, the sort to have fallen into rapid disuse with the introduction of mobiles. But in his mobile I have found nothing of interest, and after pushing the pager's every button in a variety of configurations I was left staring only at rows of illegible symbols. 

“I assume this sends you time and location for the next gathering. How do I read the code?”

“You don't. Only the initiated can read it.”

I can try to pull his tongue; I have the time, I have the means. But I have no desire – to hear him speak yet another word, to wait any longer to appease my bloodlust, or to grant him anything approaching a merciful death. Now that I have him in my grasp, ensnared the way a spider ensnares another in its deftly spun web, I fully intend to see him squirm. 

“Game over. Your score is two wrong answers out of two, awful shame.” 

I rise from the armchair and pass into the fire-lit parlour next door. There were no Italian antiques in the cellar, but there was an ample storage of wood. The oak has made a fine, lasting fire that filled the vacant rooms with warmth—and heated the wrought iron poker with its smouldering embers. I come back holding it by the shaft through a pair of oven gloves.

“Perhaps this too looks familiar?”

Vanel lifts his head off the bed. “I think we used a different one. Blunt end, rounded handle. Didn't have that little upturned hook at the end... oh, and much shorter.”

My lips twitch. I say nothing, only come closer. He snorts.

“You can't scare me with this, Signor Landers. I bear the mark of The Beast! Branded into my flesh!”

“Be that as it may,” I breathe, shoving a rag into his mouth, “this might still sting.” 

His face blanches as I turn him over to the side and yank down his trousers. He has a mole on his right buttock, just where it joins to the thigh, and his flaccid cock is barely visible through a tangled mess of pubic hair. The plastic sheet crackles as he tries to worm away, twisting his neck to gape at his back with bulging eyes. The bed shakes, the rope holds, the zip ties sink viciously into the flesh of his wrists. No more insolent smirks, no more audacity. It's wiped off his face and succeeded by ugly terror, the most delicious terror I have ever beheld. It's everything I've ever wanted.

His pucker sizzles at the first touch of scalding iron. The spiked edge penetrates with ease past the clenched ring of muscles and I push, inch after inch, tearing a path through his bowels. The deeper I get, the harder I have to push. I brace myself against the bed and bear down with both arms, flexing my muscles, searing and piercing further still along his spine. Impaling. Vanel screams himself hoarse into the rag, and thrashes savagely against the rope but it's no use, it's too late, he's stuck with the poker buried all the way to its looped hilt. Any further and it would jut out of his throat.

My tranquil voice overlaps his strangling cries, “If one follows the vertebrae without puncturing vitals, this lovely torture can last a good couple of days. While it would certainly be nice to come back tomorrow and still find you breathing, I don't think I've done the best job of avoiding internal damage. Awful shame.”

I hear retching and take out the gag, soaked with vomit. He tries to swallow it back down and chokes, but not to death. Droplets of perspiration bead like dew on his veined forehead, trickling down the slope of his brows to then pour inside the creases of the plastic sheet under his head. He wheezes and gargles horribly, fighting for air and finding just enough of it in his lungs to spew out a string of insults.

And he looks straight at me, with eyes that are at once beast-like and human. Possessed by lunatic fury, ablaze with pain. 

It's something that cannot be grasped unless seen, this look. It's like witnessing a display of aurora, or sighting any of the Seven Wonders of the World. One can view photographs, and read the most exhaustive descriptions, and try one's best to imagine the beauty—but it's never going to be the same as seeing and living it for oneself. Some things just have to be experienced in the flesh, drank in with several senses at once. Close and intimate, real and within reach.

What I see in Vanel's eyes is rarer than Northern Lights and to me more wondrous than any Wonder. Something that can be borne only in the throes of imponderable agony, and only by someone teetering on the brink of inescapable death. That is why I kill, to see it.

But not this time. This time I have different reasons.

“You touched him,” I whisper. “Filthy, unworthy hands. _Marked_ him like you owned him, like you had the right.”

Vanel splutters, straining out every word as though it were to become his last. “Oh, get over yourself. In the end we did the kid a favour. He was practically a vegetable.” He chortles, a burbling wet sound. “To sacrifice him would've been an affront, so we ended his misery. You're welcome.”

“Affront,” I repeat blandly. 

He lights up, seeming to momentarily forget all pain. “ _Si, si_. A sacrifice is not only a token of reverence, but a gift. Would you give someone a broken, used toy? A dirty rag off the floor? A one-eyed puppy with fleas?”

I press the rag to his mouth, grasp the poker by the handle and jerk it around. His eyes bug out of his head and he blabbers something presumably in Latin, blood and spit foaming at his mouth in the likeness of a rabid dog. 

And something swells in me all the while, expands in my chest like a growing core, like a rubber balloon pumped full of hot air, about to pop. I would call this 'anger', but it's nothing like the anger I have felt in the past. When it consumes reason and tears control from my grasp, it can only be rage. Stifling, swirling, caught high in my throat. I must have always had it in me, stored deep within all this time, like a dormant pathogenic virus now spreading in a toxic rush through my system. Mutating.

Vanel grins at me, and his bared teeth shine slick with blood. I have to lean in to make out what he's saying:

“Did you buy him a pretty little coffin?”

“He's _alive_ ,” I hiss, looming closer. “You stupid fucks didn't even stick around to make sure.”

I pull back just in time to evade an eruption of spittle. His body shakes with mad, guttural laughter, the last of his life. Bubbling red froth spills and sprays from his mouth as he says, “Ah, _mi dispiace_. I went all out, but you know how it is after a good fuck. Muscles turn to jelly and your grip gets slack... vegetable or not, I have to admit he was still good for one thing and one thing only. Still a pretty cum bucket, if rather disposable.”

For a second I cannot believe this is happening. My hands are shaking and I don't remember them ever shaking before, not like this, not with _emotion_. 

It doesn't feel good, being enraged. It makes my head spin and boils me from the inside like a fever. And I know what the cure is, I'm beginning to see; through my rage-blurred vision yet clearer than ever.

I seize the poker and _pull_. 

And Vanel's howl is so wonderfully inhuman that I pull even harder. The sharp little hook shreds through his mangled entrails and the shaft comes out black with blood. The odour of feces hits my nostrils, but I don't care. 

Vermin, affront, filth.

I lift the poker high in the air and bring it back down with all my might. Once, then twice, then over and over. I crush his nose, poke out his eyes, crack his skull. His jaw breaks with a crunch and his teeth collapse shattered into his mouth. Blood keeps pooling around his head and branching out across the sheet, splattering over the faded wallpaper like fresh wet paint, tinting the flowers a newer red. My arms throb but I swing again, and again, until all there remains of him is a soggy, gory pulp—and then, as I straighten myself with heaving chest and blood-sticky hair falling over my face, somewhere on the edge of my vision looms a figure.

I'd had, thinking of fatefulness as I waited through the evening, a certain reflection. Wouldn't the justice be far more poetic if Ciel were here to watch his defiler take his last breath—or, better still, if he stopped that breath himself? I'd thought then that life could not write such perfect scenarios without aid, but I was wrong. Life had an unmatched sense of drama and I was no longer alone.

“When did you get here?” I ask, calming my breath. 

“Does it matter?”

“ _Why_ did you come here?”

The room is small, but his voice seems to reach me from afar. “GPS tracker. You've been acting strange lately, so I stuck one inside your car.” 

And as he speaks, not a single syllable is stuttered and not once does his gaze stray from the mutilated body upon his old bed. He hardly bats an eye; no slack-jawed horror, no startled exclamations, not so much as a gasp. He doesn’t keel over with nausea or run outside to yell murder, nor does he take a single step back as I come closer. When I'm just a few inches away he finally tears his gaze from Vanel and looks up at me with starry, spellbound eyes; as if he were watching fireworks shoot up in the sky, or admiring a beautiful sunset by the sea. Like I was one of the Wonders of the World.

My rage was brief and violent as a cloudburst. I cannot name the feeling that takes it over as Ciel brings his hand up to my face, swabbing gently at the drying blood with a silken handkerchief I think used to belong to his mother. It smells like jasmine, and he lets it stain.

“Have you had dinner?”

He shakes his head, peeling a lock of hair off my cheek.

“You must be hungry. Go home, I have a lot of cleaning to do.”

He nods without moving from the doorway. I lift up my hand and pry the dirty handkerchief from his fingers.

“Go on, little one. I will see you tomorrow.”

His gaze lingers on my lips before gliding above my shoulder toward the bed. 

“ _Riposi in pace_ ,” he murmurs, the words leaving him barely formed, without resonance, like vapour.

And then he gives me one last glance and turns his back to me slowly, somewhat wistfully, as if hating for us to part. He disappears into the dark and the tap of his heels on the staircase is cadenced, mechanic. As though I'd put him under a spell and he moved in some hypnotic trance, unable to defy my bidding.

The spell was infatuation. To have killed in his name was like sending him a valentine, signed in red ink.

The door clicks shut but still I am rooted to my spot, searching out the darkness ahead. We had been strangers before, in a way. I had underestimated the depth of his hatred and he had misjudged the enormity of my vice. But now I know him, and he knows me. I know that the nine-year-old boy with sparkling eyes who smiled so prettily in his family photo was gone in more ways than just one. And he knows what I hide behind my mask now, what I show only those who won't live to tell the tale – that black, rotten soul he had glimpsed in the pool of my eyes but only now has seen in all its profane glory, seen it as clearly as I have seen his own. Dark too, no less twisted, beyond all salvation. 

We met for the very first time, and were smitten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soo this chapter is kind of a milestone in the story! I hope this solution was not disappointing (compared to Ciel confronting Vanel) and I'm very curious to hear what you thought of it!  
>  ~~also I hope it wasn't too gross~~


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, especially after the amazing feedback I got on the last chapter! Hope this one will prove worth it ♡

When I arrived back in Hampstead, the air smelt of rain and dawn had not yet broken. The stormy sea had finally spat me out, though I could not remember how I came to wash up on the shore. The moment Ciel left the house, my brain switched to autopilot and my memory failed to register an entire night of labour—in the same fashion one forgets locking the door but does it infallibly every time, out of habit, in a deeply rooted ritual of the subconscious. As I stood on top of the stairs in this humid interlude between night and day, I knew without remembering that I had cleaned up every print, every speck, and every droplet of blood. The pendulum clock ticking silently in the foyer proved I had been busy until five, and my arms ached from more than just swinging the poker. In the few flashbacks of the night I could see Vanel's corpse spread out on the bed, still replete with fresh blood, yielding not without resistance under the wood-saw I had found in the cellar. This much I deemed worthy of remembrance: every bone I had cut through and every limb I had wrapped with plastic, bundling him up as though he were a pile of rubbish destined for a landfill.

But my memory wound up even more fragmented than the corpse, and it continued to play tricks on me long after I'd turned up in haze on my doorstep. Though at no point could I remember setting the alarm, it rang faultlessly at nine sharp to wake me in time for the first patient. To this moment I cannot, off the top of my head, recall what I prescribed Mr Woodley for the recurring of his hallucinations, nor am I sure what I advised Miss Hopkins as the next step to overcome her acrophobia. All I recall with certainty is _not_ having seen Ciel: not in the morning, not in the afternoon, not even come evening. Mrs Midford picked him up from school and phoned later to present me with the _fait accompli_ , declaring that he was going to spend the whole day at their house.

I slammed my phone on the desk without a word.

Ciel's absence felt like an empty pit, and I sought to fill it. Bard and Ronald were both occupied for the day, so I arranged to meet up for dinner with a colleague from Broadmoor. Small talk was made, drinks were downed and a battle was fought over who should pay the bill, but the evening appeared to me as something I had not lived but only witnessed by chance, like a random episode of which I was merely a passive and uncaring observer. In flesh I had been present – seated by the round table and dining on lamb chops in red wine gravy – but my thoughts had been absent. Words could be heard leaving my lips in the low timbre of my voice and it had been my money, ultimately, that the bill was paid with, but my mind had been adrift elsewhere from beginning to end, disengaged from reality as in a fit of depersonalisation.

Has my imposture gone so far already? It appeared as though my disguise – the Doctor Michaelis I presented to the world as a decoy – had acquired sentience and continued to function all on its own, without having its strings pulled or directions whispered from behind the stage. My mask stayed on even when I wasn't there to hold it up, and it felt like being split in half—or multiplied, rather, for my original self remained whole and had suffered no detriment in the creation of its alter ego. Instead of battling for hegemony, the two entities seemed to be coexisting peacefully in a single body and mind, wherein one took a turn at the steer and the other sailed into reverie.

And my turn didn't come until I found myself back on the front stairs.

The pendulum clock told me I came home just shortly before midnight, and the darkness inside Ciel's room could only mean he had gone to sleep. I stopped before his door and lingered, listening out for sounds from within. I put my hand on the knob and almost turned it. When prey comes close enough to touch, should I not go and get it? Reach back and trap it once and for all? Or will it startle if I make one false move? What if it's not tamed enough, what if I'd misread the trust in its eyes? It has been known to fool me before, after all.

To ruin months of patience by rushing the end... foolish, I thought, when so close to claiming my prize. Better wait until daylight than corner him in the dark.

And so I turned around and went to bed, if not yet to sleep. I had waded through the day in a dreamlike state only to find insomnia waiting at the end of it; as I lie now on my back and stare listlessly at the ceiling, sleep not only escapes me but seems entirely out of reach. I am myself again, for what it's now worth, no longer hovering but anchored in place, keenly aware of every shadow and dark outline in my bedroom. There is the bronze-framed mirror hanging above the dead fireplace, and the potted ficus tree that is only alive thanks to Mey-Rin, and the half-cranked door to my walk-in closet filled with black suits. 

I sigh, turning my head on the pillow. I have never had to deal with this before. My eyes keep gliding about the room, from the papers strewn across the table to the narrow bookcase with titles I haven't picked up in months, but minutes pass by and still my eyelids have not got any heavier. It's quiet here in the small hours, with the rain having let up to gather more strength, and though the curtains aren't drawn the bedroom is obscured in near-perfect dark. Tonight's moon is weak, unaccompanied by stars, floating insubstantially on the overcast sky as though it would rather be somewhere else, doing something other than illuminating such a still, stifling night. 

When the knocking comes, it comes so softly I mistake it for another trick of my jaded mind. The knob seems to turn by itself, and the door swings open in a ghost-like motion to reveal a shape. It enters, wispy and out of focus, pressing against the door to close it with a quiet click.

“Sebastian, are you awake?” Ciel whines, like a little boy who fell and scraped his knees. “I can't sleep.”

And if I heard that voice in a faceless crowd or behind my back, I would take it to be the voice of a stranger. For how could a voice so distinguished be capable of such sweetness of pitch? How could someone speaking words so mature ever be heard moaning infantile complaints? The voice could not possibly belong to the Ciel Phantomhive I knew, yet there was no one else who could have sneaked so late after midnight into my bedroom. 

I sit upright.

“Why, what's the matter?”

Ciel shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “I'm having bad dreams.” 

“Is that so? What kind?”

“About this one mister,” he says, and I can sense the impish smile on his face. “He seems nice at first but he actually likes to kill people, and in my dream there was a lot of blood and it was so so scary.” 

“My, that sounds awful.”

“What if he comes for me? Please can I sleep with you?”

I draw a deep sigh, as if I'd rather he didn't but it couldn't be helped. “Very well,” I say, extending my hand in invitation. And my blood is singing, a lusty chorus in the nocturnal quiet, each beat of my heart pumping a fresh hot flood, overflowing.

Yes, yes. Come to me, sweetheart, just a little bit closer.

So he comes, barefoot across the parquet and the soft woollen rug, almost there. He gives me his hand and my fingers clamp down on it like the jaws of a trap, closing around his wrist like a manacle—and I won't let go, I won't. I lift the duvet and Ciel slips unashamedly into my arms, upon my lap and under the warmth of my sheets. Right where I want him, where he fits so well.

But we don't move yet. His hands stay wrapped around my neck, thumbs pressed on either side of my Adam's apple, tuning into the thunderous throb of my pulse. Our gazes fight to pierce the dark, and keep failing. The moon is still idle and we're nothing but grey, featureless shapes. I can't see the lust in his eyes, nor can he see mine, but it flows between us like a current and it's only getting stronger, swifter, impossible to resist.

Our foreheads touch, our lips just nearly. Not even an inch apart now. His breath is sweet from honeyed milk, tumbling in erratic puffs from his mouth into mine, and it hitches more sweetly still when I grind him down on my cock. His thumbs dig into my neck and one of us will snap soon, one of us will give in.

It shouldn't be me, not this first time.

If I tighten my grasp all at once he will reject it; if I rough him up too hard he will only hate me anew. Despite the wild fantasies that have swarmed me all winter, I never forgot that my touch could trigger his demons. He needed control to make up for every stranger who had torn it from him and taken what they wanted by brutal force. I imagined myself as the one who would help him regain it, for the part of him that shied away from touch was the only part I wished to set right. I would have to restrain myself, I knew, let him take one careful step at a time; adjust to his pace even if it had to be gentle and slow, submit to his will until he began submitting to mine. There could be no bite of pain, only pleasure, and not a single touch without consent.

But really, who was I kidding?

I curl a fist into the hair at his nape and hold him still as our mouths collide. My tongue laps up all of his sweetness and my arms lock behind him like steel bars, crushing. Final. But though I have made my embrace into a prison, Ciel is not planning to escape it. He tears the buttons off my shirt and weaves his fingers into my hair with a deep, delighted groan. And so hungrily he kisses me back; as though I too have been swarming his winter dreams. His cheeks radiate a fevered heat and his body, as I free it from his nightgown in a single rip, arches up inflamed beneath the rough press of my hands. Burning, for me. 

So I lay my claim and ask not for permission. Greedy, unbounded, I paw up his thighs to the soft swell of his bottom – grabbing handfuls, leaving imprints – until I climb to the small of his back and grind there to a sharp halt. 

Instead of more silky skin to caress, I find but a raw expanse of scars; ridged, imperfect, spamming irregularly all the way to his shoulders. I forgot they were supposed to be there, those only scars he has kept secret. I don't like the way they feel under my fingertips. 

And Ciel doesn't like that I've stopped. He huffs, wriggles, nibbles on my bottom lip and tugs at the drawstring of my pants. Down, off, and my cock springs free. Ciel tests his grip on it, firm yet shuddering, and measures me closely in the dark; tracing the thickest vein, thumbing at the slit, circling two fingers around the shaft. My own hands unfreeze, dropping back to where no flaws taint his skin, and before I can stop to think or think to stop my fingers spread his cheeks and push into him forcibly—

Easily. Slipping into a wet, ready heat. Loosened but still tight, clenching.

“ _Oh_ , you poor thing,” I groan into his ear. “Really could not sleep a wink, could you? Were the dreams that bad?”

“Horrible,” he drawls in the same childish voice, pumping my cock, “I just couldn't stop thinking—”

“—about the mister?”

“Yes,” he gasps when my fingers curl just right, “ _Yes_. About the mister. And then I heard someone outside my door, and _kept_ thinking—” he loses track of his words, breathless, lifting his hips off my lap, “—of what he would do to me, if he caught me.”

I pull out from him, mad with need. His fingers slide up and down, slipping and tangling, fumbling to guide me inside, quickly, clumsily, until I find a grip on the base of my cock and _push_. Such a tight fit, the head alone, but he keeps bearing down like he wants all of it at once, and I bury myself inside his lithe little body with one harsh snap of my hips. His nails sink into my chest and his lips tear from mine and a hiss sounds sharply from between his teeth—but he didn't ask for gentleness, and his wish was my command.

He moves and I move; no subtlety, no finesse. I bite down on his shoulder and his lips latch to my neck in revenge. Oh, the sounds he makes as I fuck him! Intoxicating, erotic. Dripping with an ecstasy of pain, a music far sweeter than the screams I would have extorted on any other night. Tonight he's chanting my name, pressing me into the headboard, claiming control without my giving it up; and no matter what liberties I take with my touch, his demons remain slumbering.

Maybe his mind has rebelled against logic, like mine. Maybe his instincts have taken over, or the shelter of darkness grants him a sense of ease—or maybe it's because of me. Because he _trusts_ me.

Yes, it has to be it, all of this for me alone. No one else, not ever.

I throw him onto the mattress and he lets me hold him down. His thighs, hot and slick with sweat, lock tight around my hips as I shove into his yielding body, and his skin is of a white so pure it gives off a phantasmal glow, pale against the black sheet and the black of the night, luminescent. I can almost see him, almost clearly, shaking with the force of my thrusts, spread out in the height of pleasure beneath my ravenous eyes. Is he tearing up? Is he flushed to the tips of his ears, all the way down to his collar? Are his lips still their dusty pink, or bitten red? Glistening, gasping? I can reach just a little to my left and flip on the bedside light—

But I won't. Because if I see him right now I will lose it, I will break him in half. 

And if I do ever decide to break him, I want to watch myself at work in the full light of day. Tonight he will fall apart only in pleasure, and die only the little death. Tonight I want to smother him only with passion, and be the first one to make him reach its peak.

And so my kisses leave marks but not bruises, a small bite of pain with the lightest graze of teeth. _He's_ the ruthless one of us two, scratching up my back until I sting and burn all over. We're on the brink now, tipping, Ciel's moans climbing higher, husky like his screams, gorgeously desperate, stumbling over the syllables of my name. Close, closer. He thrashes, tenses, _tightens_ —and my hips can't stop moving, my dark vision goes darker and I come, long and hard, spilling into the snug heat of his body, growling from the depths of my throat in a fit of wild, exhausting bliss. 

And then I fall, drained, on my back next to Ciel. Managing just barely not to crush him with my collapsing weight. We lie spent and sweaty under a mess of silk sheets, and I can't tell whose breathing is heavier, or who falls asleep first—but in those last conscious seconds, as I find myself staring once more at the blank stretch of my ceiling, the only thought that crosses my mind is how the world always seems to lay everything at my feet. 

How in the end, no matter the means, I always get what I want. 

***

When I open my eyes, the room is no longer eclipsed in dense dark but seeped in the monochromatic grey of dawn. Instead of sepulchral silence, I hear the whistle of wind flinging itself against the walls and the beating of a new rain against the windows, blown in fresh surges with each ferocious gust.

Another sunless March morning, another beautifully bleak beginning of day. 

And yet I am restless.

After the blackout, I kept turning fitfully from side to side and drifting in and out of shallow sleep – one moment acutely aware of the small figure curled somewhere beside me, the next moment believing him to be only a dream or feverish mirage.

Yesterday I walked around as in a drug-induced daze, and not all of it has yet left my bloodstream. It coats my mind like a membrane which I lack momentum to pierce; I cannot fall back asleep, and I cannot think straight. I am distracted by the naked glare of Ciel's back, draped like a sculpture with a spread of black silk. 

A flawed sculpture, not meant for display. A landscape of hypertrophic scars, skin mismatched like an exquisite cloth stitched haphazardly with whatever scraps lay at hand. The mystery has at last been uncovered, but I don't like the sight of it any more than I'd liked the feel of it in the dark.

I reach out to stroke at random along his blemished back, mapping out the discoloured net of unevenly healed burns without pattern or purpose; with a finger, with open palm, with the back of my hand. Ciel is awake, I can sense, unflinching under the surprise of my touch, allowing it as though in exchange for an answer to the question that falls from his lips:

“Are you him? The vigilante.”

“I am.” There is one scar – a thick, stain-like patch running between his shoulder-blades – that I don't like in particular. My finger traces it mindlessly back and forth.

“Did you kill my aunt?”

“Yes. I staged her suicide.”

His silence is charged with something that makes me drop my hand on the sheet and await reaction. I watch the twin slope of his fine-boned shoulders, unsure what emotion was causing them to tremble. I listen to his shaky breath, wondering if it will soon break into sobbing, and then laughter as sudden and sharp as a whiplash comes bursting out of him into the quiet of the room. Carrying some wicked, unapologetic joy and catching, as it peaked, the same hoarse note I had found in his moans and screams.

“What the hell is wrong with me?” he chokes through a stream of mad giggles, and I blink. Should his question not end with a different pronoun? Just as I open my mouth to regale him with a comprehensive list of his 'wrongs', Ciel turns to me with a swish of silk and I realise the question had been rhetorical. He looks at me over his shoulder, with amused blue and desolate violet, burning in the dull dawning light like a pair of coloured coals. His beauty stops my breath.

“No, I mean really. The happiest day of my life is a funeral. The most romantic gesture I have found to be battering my rapist’s head with a shit-smeared fire poker. And you know what feels like the best thing I've ever done? Jumping into bed with a murderer, somehow, which is why I'm now wondering—what _is_ wrong with me?”

I let his question sink in, making sure that this time it’s the kind that demands of me an answer. I can't give a wrong one, not now. 

“Do you want me to define you?”

“Dissect me, like you've been trying to do since the start, like you were writing a book about your patients and I was a chapter, not too long not too short, detailing the case of C.P from start to— well, what you would consider to be a relevant end.” 

I pull myself up, burying one hand under the pillow. Ciel mirrors my position. “Why a whole chapter? All your complexity can be put into paradoxically simple words. No need for 'whys' and 'hows' or clinical dissections. It suffices to say that you are damaged, deeply and irreversibly, as are your morals and feelings and values. Every part of your little being deviates from what society calls 'normal', and that abnormality has exiled and branded you for life. You are scarred, not just in flesh; warped, but warped into the most beautiful shape I have ever laid my eyes on.” 

Ciel's brows press together. “But you have just described the furthest thing from beautiful I can imagine.”

“Then imagine art without tragedy. Where would it be? Without war, injustice, pain? Death, sickness, unrequited love? Transforming ugliness into beauty is art's highest form and greatest achievement – just think of all the masterpieces that otherwise would never have been created.” I brush my thumb over the small gash on his bottom lip. “You are one such masterpiece, little one, and masterpieces are not meant to be confined into mere explanations; they are meant to be contemplated, extolled, and admired. They are far too rare to fit into labels, too unique to be measured by simple conventions, too elusive.”

In one moment, Ciel is struck silent. In the next, he smiles.

It's no longer the maniacal laughter or his usual sarcastic cackle; not his mischievous smirk or the forced, lopsided grin he uses to fool his aunt; and it's not, by a long shot, the innocent smile I kept tucked between the pages of my journal, immortalised in a photograph full of dead people in the city of love and lights.

It's a new smile, just for me.

“Nice save,” Ciel says. “Which, again, I should not find romantic.”

“But you're not normal – remember? You should start making your own 'shoulds', I think.”

He arches a brow. “Oh, you mean like you make yours? All sounds well and good unless coming from the mouth of a serial killer. Context matters, you know.”

I settle for a cryptic smile. He wets his lips and sidles over to me across the mattress. Bare in the nascent daylight, his body looks much more fragile than it had felt beneath me at night, taking everything I had to give and clawing into me as he begged for more.

Now he lays his head on my pillow and asks, holding me with his gaze, “What is wrong with _you?”_

I decide to tell him. The big bad truth with a sprinkle of sweet lies. I tell him in a calm, quiet voice that accompanies the monotone of falling rain and weaves undisturbed into the howling of wind. My story is a long chapter, and I tell him everything – from what I consider the beginning toward an unforeseeable end.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story is slowing down a little after the last two chapters, so prepare for a dose of internal monologuing~ Also thank you all once again for the wonderful feedback!!!

Not Enochian, not Theban. Clearly not a pre-existing cipher at all. I have leafed through numerous books on the occult and found no match. I copied and counted every symbol, scoured for similarities between each intricate shape, put down the most commonly repeated combinations—and with the chart thus completed, I sat and stared at it for over an hour. No pattern emerged, no grammatical logic became apparent. It felt like dismantling a math problem and getting stuck on the first step, listing available data and failing to solve a single equation. I didn't even know if the code encrypted English, Latin, or some obscure extinct language. It did occur to me that Ciel might fare better – with his love for puzzles and whatever insight he may or may not possess from his close brush with the Satanists – but it wasn't like I could ask him. He wouldn't react with enthusiasm, I'm sure, to the idea of assisting me in the search of the cult responsible for his gravest scars. 

Not when my plan for it was other than complete annihilation.

For would it not be a terrible waste? I was impressed by the flourishing prosperity of underground crime in London: first Lau's gambling den and child sex trafficking, now a full-fledged evil cult straight from horror films and twentieth-century conspiracies. How could I let such a rare opportunity pass me by? I have stumbled upon a gold mine of knowledge and wanted to plunder its riches. Discover their history, hierarchy, philosophy— _morality_ , most of all, and the stories of its corruption. Through what twists and turns has it become so perverted? What meandering paths have led them all so astray? I wanted a first-row seat for the spectacle of their sin and Vanel's pager was to be my ticket, a stolen invitation to a secret ball, now sitting uselessly in the palm of my hand.

I thumb along its plastic edges, examining every angle. Non-alphanumeric, filled with encrypted messages, bearing no serial number and no brand. Custom-made or remodelled to suit the cult's purposes, I supposed, though with my limited technological knowledge I was unable to fully appreciate the ingenuity of such a system. I could not even guess where the messages were being sent from – surely not an online operator or a regular radio transmitter – but I was only interested in _what_ was delivered, not how. The important thing was that it came straight from the highest chain of command, in one direction only, reaching every member at the exact same instance. 

I haven't heard it ring yet. When the time comes, however, I know it will ring in the melody of Ciel's nightmares, in the voice of Miss Dalles's guilt.

I switch off the pager and throw it inside the topmost desk drawer, burying it under two cryptography books and the sheet of paper scrawled over with undeciphered code. Ciel has come home, undressing quietly in the foyer, and I needed to clear the coast of all incriminating evidence if I were to let him in. We haven't seen much of each other these past three days, and spoken even less. Not because he shut me off again, no. _I_ shut _him_ off, in a way.

He had taken up so much of my time and focus that I never realised how far I had fallen behind with my work. Full patient schedule, overdue research, unfinished presentation for next week's congress... I rolled up my sleeves and got down to it with begrudging efficiency, like a child not allowed to play before finishing their homework. I slept little, abused the coffee machine and scarcely left the study, exiling myself half by necessity and half by choice. I had a backlog of thoughts that needed tending, a whole swarm of distractions, and the moment I let down my guard and left even the smallest opening, my mind wandered invariably to the mysterious cult.

And to Ciel, always. To all the things he made me feel and do that I didn't understand. 

When I stepped out of bed that gloomy morning, and the mists of my daze cleared steadily as I showered, the significance of what I had done appeared before me in a brand new light of lucidity. My own urges had seized and enslaved me, pushed until I bent to their implacable will. I always listened to their demands, but I listened in due time. I ought to have mastered them years ago, once and for all, and yet here I had danced to their every tune. 

An odd tune, at that. Conducted, of all things, by feeling. Until now I have only killed _in order to_ feel, not _because_ I felt, and it contradicted everything I had established myself to be. I needed to pull back and plan ahead, withdraw into a safe distance and judge myself with the same detachment I had lost along the way. People call it their 'comfort zone', I believe, and in facing this surfeit of foreign emotions I felt like I had left mine. My comfort relied heavily on control – over my own actions and the actions of others – and I spiralled well out of it while waiting for the traffic light in Marylebone to turn green. It was then that the poisonous seed of wrath—planted within me the instance I laid eyes on Vanel—sprouted and grew into a force with which I had been powerless to reckon. I was impelled, for the first time, to commit the infamous crime of passion. 

And it had been messy. Messier even than my second kill, when fifteen years ago I went and stabbed that hapless drunk because I couldn't stave off my freshly discovered thirst. And though I have long since risen above it, I looked back into that grimy alley not with scorn but with something approaching nostalgia, with the same fondness one might look back upon mistakes of a rebellious youth. I understood why I had done it, and I still remembered what it had felt like to be devoured by instinct—but remembering the fury that burned so recently through my veins and drove me to bring the bloodied poker down and down and down, I wondered how could I have possibly let it subdue me. So palpable then yet so tenuous now; long since cooled and dissolved into apathy, it seemed implausible that I should be ever capable of it again. A momentary aberration, I thought, a system error unexplainable by logic. A glitch, a virus, now quarantined and removed. How did it make sense for me to have hated Vanel with such instant, virulent passion? In the end, he had played a vital part in shaping— _warping_ —Ciel's psyche. The scars he had left in remembrance were a sweeping brushstroke across the canvas of this tragic masterpiece that had me so dazzled, and yet I loathed them as I had loathed their creator.

The answer, in all its simplicity, came to me on the very first day of my isolation, as I sat sipping brandy for lunch because coffee was not enough to wake me up for Mrs Diaz. My hatred, as well as my rampage, had been evoked by nothing more than the insufferable knowledge of my property being harmed. I had never before felt rage because never before had I encountered anything to induce it, nothing at all to get in my way. But were my pride soiled or plans trampled; were I to be outsmarted, humiliated, or robbed of anything I considered mine, that rage would surface just as it surfaced when I met the man who had touched what I claimed my sole right to lay hands on. And while many more had paid for that same right and still dared to breathe and walk and shit and speak, they were but a nameless mass of vermin that lurked in the shadows of Ciel's past. 

His demons, I simply called them. To Ciel, of course, they were much more. They were fleshed out, and tangible. They all smelled and tasted of things he now hated, of vodka and cigars and sweat-soured cologne. They all had voices, and faces, perhaps even names—shared carelessly in the heat of vile passion, for what harm could have come of telling it to a dumb, drugged child?

But then I met one of his demons, one of his biggest and scariest. Standing before me all real and repugnant, like an insult spewed straight in my face. A target.

And so I struck him down, and that was all there had been to it. From whim to obsession, from obsession to possessiveness, from possessiveness to rage. A straightforward path with no stops, no turns.

Or so I'd thought. For as I finished my lunch seven minutes before the arrival of Mrs Diaz, an irksome discrepancy crept in and sabotaged my deduction. When have I ever thought of emotions as straightforward? Or _myself_ as simple? 

I took a few steps back and poured more brandy. Into my coffee mug, lest I were untimely interrupted.

When it came to studying the nature of emotion, I was thorough. There was not a single stone I have left unturned or a single theory I have left unexamined. And for someone who had to learn of it through means other than experience, I was fortunate enough to live in a time when psychiatry, neurobiology and sociology were there for me to find my footing. I could have easily been born to the unenlightened bigotry of the Dark Ages, when the most common answer to my questions would have been, 'We are but God's faithful children, created in his image and following his design.' A little later, and I might have been met with a general sentiment of 'It is what it is and the heart wants what it wants.' No, I was born in just the right time to thrive. I could follow a path paved by centuries of research and contribute a few cobblestones of my own. The imaginative yet largely erroneous answers supplied by philosophy over the years would not have led me far, and though the answers supplied by science were not set in stone and the cobbles were still being added, removed and rearranged, humanity has at last arrived at a set of practical truths about its own nature. Abstract talk of souls has been replaced with facts of biochemical reactions, shedding light on the origin of emotions and giving them shape – patterns of neural activity recorded on PET scans and fMRIs. We can watch emotions light up like bulbs on the map of our brain and point them out with a finger. 'Here's that little spark of fear you've just felt.' 'Here's the grief that has been plaguing you since your best friend's death.' 'These clusters here, and there, are your anger issues and childhood trauma.' 'And this is the image of your chronic depression—see how many bulbs are not burning?'

Emotions were definable, yes, but it was just the beginning. They came with a staggering range of variables, overlapping and interweaving together in unique interactions to produce unique results. Differing from person to person, from instance to instance. Dry, clinical words could never do emotion true justice, for I did not really understand rage until I felt it. Life stories could never be told in a sequence of molecules, and decisions depended on more than hormonal whimsy. Electrical impulses could not express art, the intricacies of culture, or the sinuous trajectories of thought that our minds traversed on a daily basis.

People were more than chemistry, and the materialistic view was wrong. It might seem oddly _good_ of me to say this, even spiritual, as though I held humanity sacred—but then I too was part of humanity, no matter how deviant, and latest events proved I had more in common with the rest of my species than I initially thought. I had a specified (though far from simple) idea of who I was, and it was not an idea based around chemistry. I have not snooped around in my own brain to figure out 'how I worked', and what bulbs were 'malfunctioning'. I have not compared my brain to a 'healthy' one or traced the pattern of my 'pathology', for I knew that whatever I might find would prove grossly inadequate in terms of capturing the essence of my being.

It was then that Mrs Diaz arrived, and my head had been aching even before she opened her mouth. I had managed to address the discrepancy, however, and mend the hole in my thinking. Forge ahead. Emotions were infinitely complex and oftentimes fickle, but it didn't mean they defied all reason. They could make sense, like a surge of fear made sense whilst anticipating danger; a reaction arising from a stimulus through a natural process of causation. So whenever my thoughts leapt backwards to a certain moonless night (all too often, always on the forefront of my mind), in that too I sought rational order. That, too, I tried to solve like an equation, answer it just as simply as I had the mystery of my wrath. For what has sex ever been to me if not simple? Mechanical, unsaturated with feeling?

The pleasures of flesh, though gratifying, came off so overwhelmingly inferior compared to the pleasure I found in death that I rarely felt the need to chase them—wherein 'chase' might not be the best word choice in my case, I admit. No, all I've ever needed to do was select and take. With little to no effort, I had the most exquisite creatures falling into my bed and asking me later for my number, asking for more. 'Beggars can't be choosers', it is said, and I was the furthest thing from a beggar.

And yet with none of my previous lovers—all those exquisite, seasoned, well-endowed lovers—had I come anywhere near the satisfaction I reached with Ciel in my arms. It wasn't immaturity that made the difference, though I wouldn't have put it past me at all. I looked at children and saw nuisances no better than dogs, I looked at adolescents and saw troglodytes unworthy of my exclusive attention. Immaturity held to me no universal appeal, but it did appeal to me _greatly_ in the shape of Ciel's boyish charm. In his plump childish cheeks, tender limbs and doll-like features; in the fairness of his smooth skin and the delicacy of his bones; in everything I had never before known myself to desire. In how small he was, and how big I was in contrast, and how much bigger he seemed whenever he opened his mouth to speak. How tall he grew, and imposing, through the magnitude of his polished words. 

But he was an exception, _always_ the one and only exception, never the rule.

He could be thirteen, he could be thirty. I lusted for people, not age. For unique beauty, in whichever form it might come, and Ciel's happened to come on the outside and inside alike – radiant on the surface but murky below it. Were he but a hollow yet beautiful husk, I would have looked once but not twice. There would be nothing for me to feed on. It was about the fusion, about all the particles of his magnificent whole; and it was about the chase, the challenge, the conquest. Yes, I enjoyed conquering him very much. He was slippery from the outset, then at once unobtainable. Humans were wired, myself included, to view what is difficult to acquire as unusually worth acquiring. Haven't we all longed for distant stars while neglecting the ground under our feet? The allure of the 'forbidden fruit' has tempted men far more virtuous than myself, and the fruit I coveted happened to hang on a very high branch of a very tall tree. Had chance not turned the tide so suddenly in my favour, I do wonder to what sacrifices and dirty tricks I would have been pushed to win Ciel back. Only a few days ago my fatal lust was still destined hopelessly for failure; by killing Vanel in the secrecy of Earl's Court, I was forfeiting the only plan I had for redemption. I was tossing away the only string of rope I could use for scrambling out of the abysmal pit of Ciel's hatred, where I was hurled that February morning and left to rot. Now look, not yet has March ended and I was back on the surface, back in good graces. One moment he was cursing my very existence, the second he was offering himself up for the taking. Oh, my fruit was ripe and sweet and tasted of triumph. I was drunk on it quite terribly. It intoxicated me like an aphrodisiac and redefined my notion of pleasure. I had fantasised of so many ways I could possess him that even in the chaste dark it seemed to me the pinnacle of bliss. No, this was an easy equation. There was the matter of my wanting to please him despite the selfishness I have always shown my lovers, but I had done so only to keep him attached and dependent. Such was my whim, to become his everything – the one who showed him pleasure, the only one who understood what he had suffered, the one who killed his demons.

And thus, from the safety of my voluntary confinement, I reasoned with myself in this manner for three aforementioned days. I had asked Ciel not to disturb me and not once has he come knocking, not even to pester me about dinner or to check how I was doing. Now that I have shed some of the weight off my mind and caught up with the overload of work, the doors of my study have finally gone from shut tight to wide open. I have reclaimed equilibrium, preserved my integrity.

“Ciel?” I call out before he can disappear upstairs. Or in the kitchen, for tea. Or in the library, for yet another book. “Come here for a moment.”

Unhurried footsteps shuffle my way from the main hall. Ciel appears in the doorway, brows raised only slightly, perching there as on the threshold of enemy territory he was hesitant to breach. I gesture him inside, watching every step he compliantly takes closer. No, I still cannot presume to guess what mental processes and emotions were raging behind that unruffled demeanour. While my mind had been juggling between multiple tasks, Ciel had the luxury of focusing on one project only: everything that was wrong with me and what it meant for him both in the short and long run alike. In my narrative I painted myself as an uncaring beast that has finally found someone it cared for – the plot of a fairy tale, really – but I do wonder if he actually bought it. 

“I’ve been occupied,” I offer by way of introduction.

“Oh really?" He looks at the self-explanatory mess upon my desk. “That’s a relief. I thought you were giving me the cold shoulder.”

“Have you had time to think things through?” I ask, as though the three-day intermission had been for his benefit instead of mine.

“Think – yes. I think a lot in general. If _through_ , however, I’m not so sure. Nor what you meant by _things_ , exactly.” He cocks his head. “I’m sorry, is there some particular conclusion I was supposed to be reaching while you sat barricaded in your lair?”

“Not particular, just any at all. Time grants new angles and perspectives.”

“I haven’t suddenly grown back a moral spine and run to the authorities, if that’s what you’re asking,” Ciel says, taking a seat on the chair opposite mine. He puts his elbows on the desk, links his hands together and rests his chin on the little bridge he forms with his fingers. “Or did you want me to answer the infamous 'what now?' If so, I won’t. It’s lackluster. So far things have taken quite the interesting turn on their own, don't you find? Without meddling and overthinking. _Laissez-faire_ , I say.”

Which means you have not a single clue 'what now', and did not think it over before you climbed into my bed that night. I wonder how you really feel about us, my little, and I know that you won't tell me. You hoard your secrets and feed them to me in small doses. You never make things easy, and I like that. Please, do keep me guessing, do keep me chasing, for that is how you survive me. The moment I smell boredom will be your end.

“As you wish. Now tell me, have you been lately to your aunt's?”

“Since someone was too occupied to make dinner...”

“I'm flying this Sunday to Paris for a congress; you can either go with me, or stay with the Midfords. Surely you can afford a week off from school?”

“A congress, huh. What are you presenting?”

“What everyone wants me to present: vigilantism. I'm even a keynote speaker. See, it's still a hot topic.”

“Oh? I'm not sensing enthusiasm. You don't seem to care much for keeping the legend alive. Might it be you're abandoning the experiment early?”

Ah, he's already beginning to see right through me. Moral relativism would never cease to fascinate me, nor would the duality of human nature, but I have recently happened upon a much better object for analysis. I was being beckoned to abandon ship with siren song – a whimsical, irresistible song.

“No, I am merely taking a detour. A little time off might do London some good, coax new reactions from the public. Perhaps I'll even be missed.” 

“Right, of course,” says Ciel with a little smirk. “Anyhow. A congress equals no time for babysitting, correct? Does this mean you're giving me free rein around Paris?”

I had intended to let him roam, yes. Relive his lost childhood, revisit the streets he had walked with his parents, unearth buried memories and tell me all about them. An excellent plan for luring out his secrets, yet something in the tone of his question makes me pause and rethink it. Images come swarming vividly before my eyes – of Ciel being beaten, violated and abducted in some back alley of some shady neighbourhood in the banlieue. Which is perfectly laughable, I'm aware. Paris is no more dangerous than London (less so, I daresay, given my recent findings, given _myself_ ), and Ciel has proven himself independent enough by living on his own for three years. He didn't need babysitting, it was me who couldn't stand the thought of something happening to him—of my property being harmed. Yes, it made sense. I was hardly done playing.

“Of course. Shall I book another ticket?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A honeymoon? In Paris? ~~How innovative~~ Who's excited? :D


	19. Chapter 19

When Ciel stepped out of cold drizzle into the Sunday bustle of Heathrow, his gaze was vigilant but his features at peace. When he stepped out of Roissy-Charles de Gaulle into shy rays of evening sun, his lips were pursed and his skin a tone paler. Such was his greeting with Paris – silent treatment and a scowl.

Perhaps he was angry at me about the stewardess; that she had flirted and I flirted back. That our fingers touched when she handed me a glass of cognac and my lips shaped too easily into a dashing smile. He _was_ angry – I had noticed his thumbnails digging reflexively into the page of his book – but the muddied depth in the pool of his eye was something different. Melancholy, I thought. The bad sort of nostalgia. As though the burden of his past collapsed upon him the moment we touched down.

I tried imagining the last time he came here; led under the arm by aunt An, excited to go visit aunt Frances. Safe under the watchful gaze of his parents, their figures looming like guideposts through the mazy terminal and the crowd that did not yet seem so hostile, figures that weren't supposed to leave his side for long years to come. And as we drove through the city and he looked nowhere but the window, watching the vistas of his lost childhood unravel before him faster than he could follow, I did not even bother with asking. I just let him take it in – the city that only four years ago he saw with both eyes and not just one. The city that hadn't changed since their last meeting, not as much as he had himself. No matter how many buildings were torn down or erected, no matter how many people came to stay or left to never return, the soul of Paris remained the same – unlike his own.

He was silent as we rolled off A1, silent as we passed Champs-Élysées, and silent as our taxi pulled up on the street. He left me to carry both suitcases and squinted up at the building. Instead of a hotel suite near the convention centre, I had rented a flat in the sixteenth Arrondissement just twenty minutes away, with furnishings as lavish as the famous Ritz and a row of tall windows overlooking the Seine. I was pleased, though not so much with the view or luxurious décor as with the lack of cameras, with the quietude so rarely found in the heart of a metropolis. We had the top floor to ourselves, and the apartment below was empty, and the walls were thick enough to muffle screams. I was pleased.

There were two bedrooms to choose from, all for the sake of appearances, but Ciel never had any intention of sleeping alone. “You're going to be my scarecrow for nightmares,” he announced as we settled inside, throwing his pillow onto my bed, and it was the first time I had ever thought of him as naive. Did he really think it would work? Here, in the city that symbolised all that he had lost, his dreams were bound to be anything but sweet. He ought to have braced himself for the worst: nightmares flavoured with guilt and grief and gore, visions of wandering lost and calling for someone no longer there. I left the curtains open to let the night lights inside, thinking he might want to ward off the horrors as we had before – make me exhaust him until he blacked out into a torpid sleep – but he laid himself out of reach and did not once turn his back to face me. I stayed awake in the pale dark for an hour, watching the breadth of that forbidding back for signs of surrender. Any minute now, I told myself, and he would cave. I would hear the rustling of sheets and feel the press of his body against mine. Unless he, too, was waiting? I whispered his name but he didn't whisper mine back. He didn't look over his cold little shoulder and beckon me finally to his side, or let my hands roam at leisure beneath his shirt and stretch out his neck in a generous offering.

I waited in vain. Was that his strategy? Withholding my touch to rebuild the tension that he had snapped? Stoking our lust so we could sate it again at its finest, at the breaking point of our patience?

Fine. I was willing to let him play it this way for a day or two, but a _nightmare_ — a nightmare he could not withhold. I was prepared to be awakened by a gasp and the sharp tug of the duvet being snatched off my sleeping shoulders. I would have settled for holding him at least in comfort, however false, if it meant I could gorge myself again on the ambrosia that was his misery. And once I had lulled him back to sleep, once I had got high on that narcotic scent of dolour, I would have wedged a hand between our bodies and relieved myself as I had done on those oblivious nights back in London, back in the dead of winter. And this time I would have ventured to touch him—only a little, only gently. The lightest of caresses in the quietest hour of the night, so that he wouldn't wake up and wouldn't know, just like he didn't know back then.

But he slept well. _To_ _o_ well, almost, too soundly. No screams to hush, no shivers to soothe. My alarm woke us both at seven sharp and it was Monday. Ciel lay yawning and stretching on the bed while I dressed, reluctant to rise, wallowing in the rare afterglow of a full night's sleep. “I had a dream,” he even told me, or told himself while I just happened to be in the same room, “A _pleasant_ dream.”

And that was all he was willing to divulge. He relived the dream in his mind all morning, over and over. Guarded it enviously like a treasure belonging to him alone. 

_I_ wanted to be the one he dreamt of. Or to have made the dream possible, at the very least. Wasn't I, ironically, the most pleasant thing that has happened to him in years? But I didn't ask, only told him to hurry.

By seven forty we were out the door, stepping from the silent refuge of our apartment onto the narrow, rowdy street. Ciel shivered and fastened the topmost button of his coat; at the irresolute beginnings of April, the morning carried a biting chill and the sun was obscured with pale grey clouds. We headed for breakfast to the nearest café, perched by the junction of our street, with dark red awnings and a row of round tables cramped on the pavement. Our knees touched when we sat on the wicker chairs outside, but neither of us said a word. We absorbed silently the bustle of Paris and all that came with it: the rumbling of scooters, wafts of exhaust fumes, distant melodies of street buskers and streaming, hurrying pedestrians. 

Was there ever a time I needed respite from the din of urban life? Most people did, I noticed. Every so often they had to unwind and escape to summer homes by the lakeside, where the roar of traffic yielded to birdsong and the pulse of nightlife gave way to the chirping of crickets. Was Ciel one of those people? Instead of swapping one capital for another, would he have rather spent his vacation in the company of nature – someplace far? Someplace he could remember what the stars looked like, and how it felt to really breathe? I imagined him stretched out on the grass by a forest stream, sipping tea from a thermos flask and watching, through the swaying treetops overhead, the languid progress of clouds across the sky. Yes, he would have loved to break away from civilization; to look around and find not a single soul in sight that could hurt him, disturb him, or even ask what had happened to his eye. 

A charming little picture, but I was standing outside it. Solitude was not my element, and too much peace would drive me mad—or madder still, were I to be described as such to begin with. I couldn’t see myself hiking through woods, scaling a mountain or relaxing on a wild beach. No, I belonged in the city. My hunting grounds were noise, waste, and pollution. I wasn’t made for watching birds or flowers; I was made for watching humans, and the streets of Paris were teeming with the finest of specimen, brimming with diversity that trickled before my eyes in all shapes and forms. Every nationality, every religion, every race. Both transparent nobodies and eccentric somebodies alike. The rich bumped into the poor, the happy rubbed shoulders with the miserable, the beautiful trod alongside the disfigured. But no matter who they were or what they showed on the surface, inside they all contained a hidden universe of thoughts and secrets and feelings, a private microcosm invisible to the naked eye of a perfect stranger. As a random Englishman breakfasting in some nameless café on the corner of just another street, my only choice was throwing guesses; but as they passed me by on their way to unknown destinations, imagining the borders and structures of their universe made for the most addicting game of all.

It wasn’t Ciel’s element, but he appeared to be playing along. His Sunday grimace had smoothed overnight and his blue eye trailed after pedestrians with a mild, detached interest. Squeezed safely between the table and the café's glassed front, he didn't seem to mind the strangers as much as he did whilst walking among them. Here he could judge without being judged back, watch the way he would watch animals through a glass pane at the zoo. Here he felt invisible, inviolable, outside the picture. And though in no way did he acknowledge my presence, I knew he was aware of it acutely at all times. The current was always flowing, our knees were still touching. Here, with me, he felt safe. He couldn’t escape into the wilderness, but he could try to escape the glum confines of his universe and imagine the world through somebody else’s eyes. The middle-aged Muslim’s, for instance, shouting his morning frustrations at the person on the other end of his call; the truant teenager’s with dreadlocks and bulky headphones playing music audible only to himself; the red-headed tourist’s frantically consulting Google Maps on her scratched-up smartphone. 

Did he ever wish he could trade his life for theirs? I had no way of finding out, not when we each sat spinning our separate stories in comfortable silence, never exchanging so much as a glance or remark. We too seemed like perfect strangers, sitting at the same table only because all the other seats were taken—as though we didn't know each other's darkest secrets and didn't _share_ a secret that would stun and stop every pedestrian dead in their tracks. The waiter would drop his tray, if he knew. The businesswoman two tables farther would spill the rest of her flat white. The driver in the yellow Renault would crash into the kerb.

But who could guess, by the mere look of us? 

Having had my share of people-watching and fresh croissants, I settled the bill with a handsome tip and left Ciel to plan his day over a second cup of café au lait (sweetened, no less, with three spoonfuls of sugar). 

“See you at dinner,” I said.

“Fine,” he said, watching me hail a taxi. 

And off I went to the convention centre. My lecture wasn't due until Thursday, but the congress was too major of an event to afford missing even a single day. I had work to last me the whole week: attending symposiums, taking research notes, eating lunches with professors and doctors and anyone who may mean something or have something meaningful to say. But though I had to work, I didn’t have to stop playing the game. I could take it to the next level, in fact: go from watching to exploring. Select a target and dismantle them piece by piece. And while I had left my main project alone on the sidewalk, I did happen to make a promising acquaintance to keep me amused while we were apart. 

A side gig, as it were. Finding herself in the neighbouring seat on a neuropsychology lecture, Professor Isabelle Rousselot held out her hand to me and blurted, half-laughing, that she knew who I was – partly because she was familiar with my work, partly because some of her students and colleagues could not stop raving about me the entire week. In response I gave her a smile: the same I had given the stewardess, the same I used to appraise how much power I held over a person on the moment of our first meeting. If they flushed, looked away, cleared their throat or answered with a coy smile of their own, I marked them as slaves of my debonair charm and knew I was free to do with them as I pleased. But Isabelle refused to be subdued by a single suave smile, looking no less unfazed than Mrs Midford. We talked in broken whispers for the entire presentation and had stuck to each other ever since, walking hand in hand from lecture to lecture like freshmen in a strange new school.

To describe Isabelle, most would begin by gushing in detail over her beauty – over the storm of long black curls and luminous hazel eyes and perhaps the ampleness of her bosom – but I was used to beauty and beauty by itself did not impress me. I, too, had a sense of who she was before we shook hands; I'd heard tales of her dominance in academic space and exceptional quickness of wit. On the surface she maintained an air of scathing confidence, but as I uncovered layers and dismantled pieces throughout the day, I found that the hard shell was in fact protecting a tender core. Sensitivity was seen as a weakness, so she suppressed it. Compassion was easily exploited, so she doled it out exclusively to the deserving. At work she kept herself in flawless check, but mingling on the corridors or gossiping over a cup of coffee, her steely temper transformed at once into cordiality and the edge in her eyes softened into a cheerful glint.

This part of the game was my favourite; what wonders I could work with more than a glimpse in the crowd! In less than a day, I got to know her like I had known her for months. Isabelle was not a bad player herself, but she could never stand with me on equal footing. For all her perceptiveness, she still failed to perceive what her new friend was hiding beneath the surface. Telling me about her research on antisocial personality disorder, she had no clue that I would make a ground-breaking case study for the paper she had begun on that very subject. The irony of it was adorable, and widely entertaining.

But something felt amiss. It spoiled my fun and trailed after me like a foul smell. So many people around, so many distractions, yet my thoughts bounced back to Ciel with almost infuriating persistence. I worried; in my own twisted manner and for my own ignoble reasons, but I worried without cease. I had never before used that word in regard to myself, and I equalled my worry to the worry one might feel at the thought of losing a wallet filled with cash—or losing, quite accurately, whole months of hard-won progress in a valuable project. I got the compulsive urge (which I resisted) to check up on him every other hour just in case, to ring him on the mobile he'd begrudgingly agreed to carry and ask what he's doing, how he's doing, _has anyone touched him_. Yes, not unlike an overprotective parent, very much like an overzealous lover. Come afternoon, I turned down all invitations to dinner and hurried back to our apartment in the sixteenth, where I found him leaned over the balcony banister and watching the streets down below, as though he hadn't had enough.

“You’re late,” he said, “I’m hungry.” And if what I’d been feeling all day was worry, what I felt at that moment must have been relief. I took him to a restaurant and listened, waiting on our order, to what he’d been doing and how he’d been doing while I prowled the congress halls with Isabelle.

Yes, he spoke. In the evening his lips unsealed at last. He spoke without looking me once in the eye, choosing to suspend his gaze on the darkening cityscape behind the window. He spoke in slow-paced, dispassionate tones—except with a touch of something tentative in the way he built each sentence, as though he were forming his thoughts for the very first time. As though they had scattered throughout the city and he had to retrace his steps to retrieve them, or he didn’t have time to think them at all and they were now making their debut in his mind. He needed to catch up with himself and he spoke to himself alone; I could only be thankful for the privilege of overhearing. 

His first stop in Paris was, predictably, the Louvre, and the first thing he did was stand where four years ago a stranger agreed to take their picture – between the roundabout and the old triumphal arch on the Place du Carrousel, with the pyramid and the museum composed together in the near distance. Ciel moved into position and waited for something to come: a crushing tide of sorrow, a grievous longing for better days, a bout of anger at the entire world for taking away every good thing in his life and replacing it with pain and nightmares and ire.

But nothing came, only a sad little twinge of nostalgia. The memory of that day had never left, though; how could he forget the lengths everyone had gone to just to see him smile? He had been difficult on purpose, secretly enjoying the show of silly faces and embarrassing banter. "Cheese!" his mother kept saying, then "Ouistiti!", and Ciel could still hear that saccharine lilt in her half-forgotten voice. So for her he tried to smile, but the effect was not to anyone's satisfaction, and they all set about tickling his sides and telling jokes he found not the least bit funny (Angelina only knew lewd ones, and Rachel scolded her with an eloquent string of French curses and a sound smack on the head). In the end it was Vincent—the only match for his stubborn, precocious son—who had baited him with afternoon dessert and thus brought that sweet bright smile into being. 

He did not know, of course, that three years later that same smile would be put up for bidding at an underground auction, raising the price of his little boy’s innocence by thousands of pounds. Lining up to pose before the grand Louvre, the Phantomhives did not suspect they would never grow old enough to view the photo in a family album and fondly reminisce the past. And the stranger, too, had no idea what he had authored; what role he had played while wanting only to help. Maybe he remembered the family even now – who wouldn't? All those beautiful people. Picture-book perfect and enviably happy. Maybe he imagined what had become of them, or smiled to himself remembering the pouting boy with uniquely heterochromatic eyes. Maybe he wondered how big he’d grown, and whether he’d learnt how to smile.

Which the boy, of course, hadn’t. He left the site of his childhood photoshoot and took his place in the long queue to the Louvre, intending to find the painting that his mother had pointed out to him as her favourite. It was a quest for remembrance; he’d scarcely spared it a glance, after all. He'd been busy deliberating whether he should have crêpes or mille-feuille or chocolate mousse for that afternoon treat he'd been promised—while I, even knowing his love for sweets, struggled to picture him as a carefree little boy whose worst life concern was choice of dessert. He recalled settling ultimately for chocolate mousse, but Rachel Phantomhive's beloved piece of art had trickled away from his memory before it could properly sink in. All he knew was that it hung somewhere among the French paintings in the Sully Wing, so there he proceeded to stroll from canvas to canvas in strategic order, hoping the mere sight of it would trigger some sudden revelation and yank the memory from whichever recess it was stored in, no matter how deep. 

Was it Satyr preying over the sleeping Antiope? Was it the tragic wreck from _The Raft of the Medusa_? Or could it be _The Valpinçon Bather_ with her milky, unblemished back? He watched, studied, but nothing spoke or jumped out at him from any of the frames. The paintings remained silent, and his memories stayed slumbering. So he rushed back, at once desperate, whipping his head left and right, stumbling aimlessly from room to room—until a guard came up to ask if he'd lost his parents.

Ciel wanted to scream at him. Yes, he'd lost them. So what? He knew perfectly well where to find them: stacked in the Phantomhive family grave on Islington cemetery under a tall sycamore tree. They left him with a fortune and a crazy aunt and with memories he couldn't dig out of his head, but if he just shut up and left him alone he might yet be able to remember—

But he bit his tongue, and turned to leave the Louvre altogether. He couldn't even attempt to guess. He had no idea what his mother would've liked, he hadn't been allowed to really know her. So he returned to the Carrousel square, passing under the old triumphal arch, and moped over his defeat around the Tuileries Garden until his feet ached for a rest. He bought a box of macarons, sat on one of the chairs around the great fountain and just stayed there listening to the rush of water, wishing the trees were already green. 

The second day, after another speechless breakfast, he climbed on his lean legs to the bottom of Sacré-Cœur. He perched on its steps with a book and hugged the railing to make himself even smaller, blending alone into the thin morning crowd. It wasn't the ideal reading spot, he knew – windy and noisy and the opposite of peaceful – but no one seemed to bother him for long hours on end, and he liked to gaze into the sweeping urban panorama every time he lifted his eyes to contemplate a passage. For the desolate prose of Pessoa, the grey sprawl of Paris rooftops felt more appropriate than a quiet bench in the park. He was like a limb severed from the collective body of society and sometimes, somehow, he managed to remove himself completely from everything and everyone around him. He muted the chatter and edited the migrating figures out of his vision. A dance group performed an entire show directly below him, and he didn't snap out of his trance until the sudden burst of applause at the end. He looked about and saw the sun high but descending, felt the soreness of his limbs on cold stone and realised he'd missed his lunch.

So he went down into the narrow alleys of Montmartre, past the souvenir shops and bakeries and colourful little cafés. He passed the rows of portraits and landscapes arrayed on the cobble pavement, stopping for just a second to watch the artists at work—and this time, a lost memory did find its way back to him at the familiar sights.

He visited the Place du Tertre four years ago with his aunt – just the two of them, looking to pass time while his parents discussed business with the Midfords. He remembered a man preying on tourists on the junction of Rue Norvins, sticking unsolicited roses into their hands and demanding five euros for accepting his ‘gift’. When Aunt An found herself holding one such rose, with deep red petals matching the hue on her dress, she thanked the ‘salesman’ and paid for it without complaining. She broke the stem in half, plucked all of the thorns, and planted the flower in the breast pocket of Ciel's blazer, laughing heartily as he winced at her ‘gift’. She laughed a lot back then, in loud peals and with abandon, but it was hard for him to think of her as she was that day: beaming, buoyant, beautiful in red. In his mind, aunt An was not laughing but reaching out to claw at his eye, livid and quivering with fury. Instead of her smile, he could see only the inhuman look on her face when she nursed him once the strangers had gone. He didn't think of happier times, he thought of the time he woke up in a foreign basement hurting all over and she was there, leaning over his cot with madness in her eyes, threatening to finish what the cultists had started if he ever breathed a word.

“Did you not wish for it to be simply over?” I risked my first question, but the risk went unrewarded. Ciel turned to me a blind eye and a deaf ear both. Our dinner was ending.

And now, as we lie down to another chaste sleep, I keep thinking not of his words but the manner in which he spoke them. I think of that blind eye and deaf ear and those brief, leery glances he sneaks at me as I walk through the room.

I’m not sure where we stand, nor where we’re headed. I haven’t yet learned to navigate his moods. And while his eye hides no residues of that February hatred, neither can I see the infatuation that took hold of him in Earl’s Court.

Perhaps he keeps wisely in mind that a predator, even domesticated, still poses a threat. That his fangs are no less sharp and his temper ever so fickle – especially when he gets hungry.

***

On the morning of our third day, playing it off as laziness and sore muscles after his climb to Montmartre, Ciel announces he's not going downstairs for breakfast and locks himself in the bathroom. 

Today is the day of dear old William’s symposium on ethics – which I would love to heckle and smear later with a disastrous review – but Ciel’s tiny tantrum is of greater importance. I have no intention of waiting until dinner to find out what’s wrong.

There is just enough time for me to make a quick run to the bakery, move the armchairs to suit my needs and brew two cups of coffee. By the time he emerges, bathed and dressed and expecting me to have gone, the sun has climbed high enough to soak the living room in dappled beams of golden light. 

“Aren't you supposed to be going?” Ciel asks, arms crossed as he takes in the coffee and the chouquettes waiting for him all fresh on the table.

“I certainly can spare an hour.” 

I gesture for him to sit, but he doesn't budge. “I thought I was 'irreversibly damaged'. What use is therapy if I cannot be fixed?”

“Therapy is not always about fixing.”

“No,” he says with a wry curl to his voice, “this particular therapy is about you getting your rocks off, for instance.” 

“Touché. But I'm unwilling to believe you don't have any unresolved conflicts that would benefit from it as well.”

“You know what?” He lifts his chin. “You're right, I do. A certain matter has been weighing heavily on my mind, _Doctor_ , and you're the only one who can help me.” He sinks into the opposite armchair, links his hands and fires without preamble, “Pray tell, how did you find the Italian? Through _Lau_ , wasn't it?”

I realised something recently. I'd always thought it were books and life's little pleasures that kept him anchored to this world, but I was wrong. What he's been holding onto this entire time was a glorious vision of revenge served cold.

“No, not at all; your aunt's sudden death captured Vanel's attention. He learnt that you were still alive and began snooping around Earl's Court to find out where you'd moved. He came to Hampstead while you were at school and pretended to be your father's old friend... which I didn't buy. The rest you know.”

Yes, revenge. Vanel's death has sharpened his appetite and now he seeks more. I'm sure he would love to watch Lau's teashop burn with everyone inside it; I'm sure he would want me, as vigilante, to help him eradicate the vermin that dwelt within. But I have dedicated myself to another project, and Lau's charming little den of iniquity was one hornet's nest I dared not disturb—at least for now. I would indeed rejoice the chance to carve up every last piece of filth who had laid hands on what is mine, but I could live with the fact they still lived so long as they lived out of my sight.

Ciel apparently couldn't. “So you never went to Lau. You never talked to him, you never made any deal, and you don't know where to find him. ”

“No, but I can help you start looking.”

“What you can do is stop lying.”

“I'm not your enemy, Ciel; I want your enemies dead. What would I have to gain from lying? You _have_ seen Vanel, haven't you? What I did to him I would gladly do again to Lau, and to his clients, and to the remaining two cultists.” 

Ciel falls unnaturally silent, unnaturally still. Only his eye is alive, boring into me with a severity that would have folded any other liar in half. He looks, and looks, as though trying to develop telepathic powers to read my mind—and then his eye clouds over, having neither gauged my sincerity nor stared me down into admission. He sits, and thinks, and considers. Shuts down like a computer during an exigent task, running simulations of every move and calculating his next words, calculating mine.

Come now, little one; you owe me this secret. I have divulged so many of my own. I have told you in such beautiful detail how I killed your aunt An, just like you asked me. I have done nothing but shower you with gifts and I will shower you with many more, but there can be only so much taking without giving in return. 

“Remaining _two_ cultists?” he says at last. “No, there is just one. I killed the other.”


	20. Chapter 20

“Any theories?”

I clench my teeth. Of _course_ he’s going to make me admit it.

“No, not exactly.”

“What about a guess, then? You like to play guessing games, I noticed.”

My smile is a little too crooked. “Let’s see. I assume you did it before we met?"

Ciel gives a small wave of encouragement, beckoning me to go on. 

“Did he divulge his name that night, and you looked him up?”

“No.”

“Was he a public figure and you saw him on the news, or in a paper?”

“No.” 

“Did he also find out you were alive?”

“Decent guesses, but no,” Ciel sighs, like a disappointed parent. “The truth is much simpler. Would you like to know the truth, Sebastian?”

Of _course_ he’s going to make me ask for it.

“Yes, I would.” 

He raises his brows, unconvinced.

“Very much so,” I have to add. But I'm not adding 'please'.

Ciel shrugs, as if it weren't a big deal to begin with, and reaches over to grab a chouquette. I watch him bite into the crisp round bun, sprinkling crumbs onto the pressed whiteness of his shirt. He chews, licks his lips, licks his fingers. I point to the corner of my mouth, showing him where a speck of pearl sugar has stuck to the corner of his own, and he sweeps it back in with the tip of his tongue. I watch.

“It was all just a shameless coincidence,” he finally says, washing down the sweet treat with a sip of sweet coffee, “with astronomical odds. Have you ever wondered about fate, karma, all that spiritual malarkey?” 

“Quite recently, yes.”

“Well, it was exactly like a gift from fate. Wouldn’t you agree I was owed one? Life is of course unjust, and when it rains it usually pours, but haven't I had enough? In my case, the overload of misery was frankly bordering on the grotesque.”

I give a light chuckle. “Almost as if you were a protagonist of a Shakespearean tragedy.”

“I know, right? Putting King Lear to shame. Except both plays and real life should have a modicum of balance, so it was high time I got a break from my stroke of ill luck.”

He stalls – eating his breakfast, sipping his lukewarm coffee – and I try not to show my impatience. He’s teased me enough for one day as it is.

“Either way, it happened exactly one year ago in April. And it only happened because I finished class early and returned home on foot instead of taking a taxi. Quite the walk.”

“You hate walks.”

“Yes, but I would’ve hated to bump into my aunt in the doorway even more, so I took my chances with the scenic route. It's often the littlest choices that make the biggest difference, don't you find? Seemingly irrelevant occurrences that put us in the right place at the right time—or, well, not so right.”

“So you just ran across him on the street?”

“I wouldn't say 'ran across'. Our trajectories never crossed, per se. You've seen how I walk the streets – I zigzag between people, stare straight ahead and avoid eye contact at all costs. So I may as well have missed him without even knowing, but just as I was about to make the turn I heard a sound: that piping, _infernal_ jingle going off somewhere in the crowd ahead. One tiny noise drowned in a medley of noises but I heard it as loud and clear as if it rang in an empty room. It was _all_ I could hear, needle-like sharp and with tinnitus-like persistence.”

I replay the melody in my head. Vanel's pager rang shortly before we left for Paris, announcing the arrival of another encrypted message. What to Ciel sounded like a 'piping, infernal jingle' and a 'creepy, squeaky tune' to his aunt, I thought sounded like a basic little baroque minuet in the style of Bach or Händel. But linked to the wrong memory and coloured with the wrong emotion, even the merriest song or sunniest day can seem sinister. The body never forgets.

“I froze. I turned my head and there he was, just a few paces farther, stopping to glance at the message. My hands went grasping up at my throat and I couldn't breathe, I couldn't move. It was just like that time on Oxford Street—only you weren't there to help me, and my heart beat twice as fast, and all I had to hold onto was the tiny voice in the back of my head, telling me to calm down and get it together or I'll miss my only chance for revenge. And what do you know, the tiny voice actually prevailed. The panic passed and all at once I was furious, fuming, flaming—” Ciel breaks off, groping for words. “Well, angry in ways that you could never comprehend. Again, life is unfair, but this wasn't _just_ unfair; this was egregiously, inexcusably, blatantly over-the-top unfair. How was it that after everything he could just walk the streets with impunity? Sleep peacefully at night while I had to hear his filthy voice in my dreams? That he got to _smile_ , all happy-go-lucky, after all the hideous things he's done and with more yet to come?” A shadow flits through his visage and his eye pierces me with a new intensity. “Not unlike _yourself_ , I suppose. You get away with everything, too. You blend into the society, you change shape.” 

“Yes, that does sound very much like myself.” I endow him with a radiant smile. “And you went after him, I gather?”

Ciel nods. “He was returning to work after his lunch break, and once I’d learnt where he worked I began to stalk him. I found out where he lived, where he dined, where he did his groceries. I learnt the names of his closest friends and the family he didn’t deserve to have. Truly, I must reiterate how much you two had in common: that illusion of normality and the camouflage weaved from success. Aleister Chamber, like yourself, was a fraud. A charming man with charming smiles and an army of skeletons in the closet.” 

Of _course_ he’s going to compare us. He knows I hate being compared. 

“Ah, but I can already tell one major difference between me and him.”

“Oh? What’s that?” 

“You like _me_ a lot more.”

Ciel blinks. I almost have him, he’s almost flustered.

“Well. You’re definitely more handsome, but I’d say the main difference lay rather in the psyche. Chamber was twisted in other ways than you.” He smiles, but it’s not the sheepish smile I had aimed to elicit. “As for the difference in my affection… who’s to say you won’t end up like him in the future?”

“And how _did_ he end up?”

“Poorly, of course.” Ciel stares me down. “I know you’re eager to arrive at the spicy details, but there’s no need to rush. Didn’t you say you had plenty of time to spare? I had to wait for it much longer, you know – three whole months, all because I tried to use Chamber to find the cult and kill as many birds with one stone as possible. I stuck a tracker inside the wheel well of his car and waited for it to lead me to one of their gatherings, but he was always too careful and I had no choice but to settle for one bird instead of the whole flock.” 

“Trust me, savouring it one piece at a time feels much more rewarding.”

“Perhaps so. I worried he might elude me if I got too greedy, so I made my move. The plan was long since ready and waiting to be put into practice; Chamber had come up with it for me himself.” Ciel checks his nails, a gesture of forced nonchalance. “He was very talkative that night, you see. The rest was quiet but he just couldn’t seem to shut up, and I remember every word he said to me verbatim. He kept on rambling how I was pretty enough but not quite his type, too skinny and too battered and besides he generally preferred girls, just a little older, with wombs freshly ripened to bear the fruits of devilish seed— yes, I'm quoting. He said the blue of my left eye could be brighter and the purple might've been a turn-on if not for the ugly red scabs, not to mention that he wanted to see expression and my eyes were like the eyes of a dead fish. He liked his girls blonde, rosy-cheeked and sweet like sugar, darling little angels he could defile in the name of his dark prince while I, frankly, had nothing left to defile.” He pauses, but not to calm down; just to eat another chouquette. For all the weight of his words, Ciel remains unmoved and his tone unemotive—as though he were bored to death by his own trauma. 

“At any rate, it was the rambling that inspired my plan. He’d handed me the perfect recipe for a lure, and I used it. All I needed to do was put on a dress, a wig, and enough make-up to—”

“What kind of a dress?”

Ciel stops mid-speech, staggered, gaping awhile before he starts glaring. His eye turns a frostbitten blue.

“What? I need the full picture.” 

Nothing. I swallow my pride in a great big gulp and add, “Please?”

“Cotton, light blue,” Ciel grinds out, not quite subdued. “With a chequered, box pleated skirt above the knee and a plain, body-tight top with no cleavage. I wore bright blue contacts to match and a long, blonde wig with twin ponytails curled at the ends. The shoes were black sandals on a two inch wedge heel, faux suede and jute, tied with a small ribbon around the ankle. Is that quite enough to paint you the full picture?”

“Almost there. What about the make-up?”

His cold voice drops another ten degrees. “Just lip gloss, pink blush and lots of concealer for the scars. There's that little gash on my lower eyelid that’s rather tricky to cover, so I just brushed my fringe over it and hoped he wouldn't notice.”

“And did you talk in a girly voice?”

His mouth gives a peeved twitch at the corner. “I'm afraid you’re going to have to live with an incomplete picture. Don't you want to know something actually relevant? Like the murder weapon, for instance?”

“Hm. Yes, my imagination can fill in the blanks. Do continue.”

He sighs, as if relieved. “I stole my aunt's pistol.”

“How did you know she had it?”

“Oh, she waved that thing around all the time. Mostly she threatened to blow my brains out with it if I didn’t start eating—you know, because customers wouldn't pay for fucking a skeleton, so I ate and usually puked everything back out… ah, but I digress. She didn't hide it very well. It had a detachable silencer and was just small enough to fit into my purse—” he falters, darting me a cross glance, “which was a round shoulder bag from white leather with a long chain strap and a silver buckle.”

“Thank you.”

“So armed and disguised I made for Blackfriars and waited for Chamber to finish his shift. My name was Céleste, I was fourteen years old and moved recently to London from Nantes. I got lost while trying to find St Paul’s Cathedral, and the moment he left his office I came up to ask him for directions. There was no way he could resist his walking wet dream, of course; he instantly offered to walk me there himself. We did some sightseeing and had a pleasant little chat along the way. He was even nice enough to buy me ice-cream – just to watch me lick it, I'm sure, but I wasn't really bothered because it was cherry with chocolate sprinkles and tasted incredible, like the ones I had yesterday in Montmartre except—”

“You digress.”

“Oh, too much detail for you? So you just want the pervy bits, not the full picture?”

“That would be optimal.”

“You're disgusting,” Ciel says as a matter of fact. “Now, Chamber told me there was a pretty garden park in his neighbourhood that I absolutely had to see for myself, but first we needed to stop by his house so that he could change from his suit into something more comfortable. I'd thought I would have to play a little hard to get—show some resistance to avoid suspicion—but he was just so delightfully dumb and horny that I didn’t even bother. All I said was that I shouldn't be going off with strangers when my mum told me to come home before eight, to which he of course replied that he was no longer a stranger and I would be safely back in time for my curfew. Truly, I could’ve just as well come up to ask him for a shag instead of directions, and it still wouldn't have occurred to him that this might be a trap. So I ‘caved in’ and we walked to his car and drove to where he lived in Chiswick. He kept staring at my bare thighs the entire ride, so much that I thought we’d both die in a car crash before I got the chance to murder him myself. I also thought he'd try to whack me on the head the moment we stepped through the doorway, but he actually proved himself to be a perfect gentleman. He asked if I would prefer to wait outside the door while he changed, but at this point I might as well have dropped all pretence and followed him into the bedroom. I sat on the bed while he stripped, holding my open purse within reach, and once his shirt was off he turned his back and gave me _this look_ — you know, the one you gave me yourself that morning in the kitchen. But instead of whipping out the pistol and killing him right then and there, I allowed him to come closer. I let him sit next to me, put his hand under my skirt and run it all the way up my thigh. I'm not sure which surprised him more, honestly – the fact that Céleste had a cock, or the fact that she pressed a gun to his head.” 

Ciel stops to steady his breath, and I think he holds back a shiver. Oh, he’s getting off on this so much; the manic glint in his eye speaks louder than words. He didn’t agree to tell me just because I’d asked; he _wanted_ to tell me. He wanted to relive the climax of his vengeful triumph and couldn’t share it with anyone but me.

His voice just slightly, almost imperceptibly, rises to a higher pitch in excitement. “I stood up and watched him crawl away on the bed. If there was ever a moment for a dramatic reveal, it was then. I could've taken off my wig, unzipped my dress to display the scars and smeared my make-up to show where his friend had slit my throat. I could've watched his eyes widen in recognition as he stuttered, ‘You! We killed you!’—but no, it wasn’t quite like in the movies. I needed the disguise on my way out and couldn't afford to mess it up for the sake of mere showmanship. So I just told him, and he happened to remember."

For what comes next, Ciel can’t stop a wicked smile from possessing his lips. “He was adequately surprised, at the very least. He did stutter, and did wonder out loud how it was possible for me to still live, and did even beg me to spare his own life quite a bit, too. But he didn't say a word about the cult and claimed never to have met Lau, so I fired into his stomach. A test shot, as it were, just to see him squirm. The second one missed and severed his jaw, but the third was a bullseye. Right in the head, drilled clean through the skull. It was over very fast, but I stood there for what seemed like a very long time. I watched his blood soak into the sheets and mostly I watched his face. I wanted to make sure that the next time it came back to haunt me, I would see it as I saw it at that moment: pale, lifeless, with a lovely bullet hole between the eyes.”

Ciel falls silent. A ray of sunlight hits his cheek as he turns his head to the window.

I lean on my palm. “And that was it?”

“That was it. Far from a perfect crime, no? So much could’ve gone wrong, but it didn't. So many accidents could've brought the plan to complete ruin, but they didn’t. _I_ could have been the one to end up dead, but I came back alive. Everything fell into place, and I got my gift.”

“Did you like it?” I ask, though I know the answer.

“Did I _like_ it? You know I have a sweet tooth, and revenge tastes just as sweet as they say. I liked the power of having him at my mercy and I liked the thought that he would never hurt anyone ever again. What was there not to like?” Ciel regards me keenly, knowingly. “But I don’t share your appetites, Sebastian. Don't get me wrong, I liked not the act of killing in itself but _who_ it was that I was killing. What I liked most was the simple fact that he was dead, by my hand, which was what he deserved. I wouldn't have liked it any other way.”

He's nothing like myself, of course. Here lies the whole beauty of his deed: in the transition. In the corruption of a once pure soul. How unblinkingly he pulled that trigger _despite_ being nothing like myself! To kill lay not in his immediate nature yet he killed with such natural ease, with the unwavering poise of someone missing a conscience. And he never wondered _if_ he should do it, only _how_ and _when_ he should do it. There occurred to him no alternative path, no solace in anything but bloodshed. Catharsis was unattainable and forgiveness was for cowardly fools. He didn’t even want to be ‘good’ or try to let go; he chose to never move forward and be forever dragged down by the pursuit of revenge. He wittingly attached the ball and chain to his dainty ankle, condemning himself for a lifetime in the prison of his past. 

One year later, he seemed pleased with the ‘wrongfulness’ of his actions. At peace with his hatred, comfortable with the blood on his hands.

What now?

When it comes to Ciel, I always have too many questions at once. I never know which one will yield the most satisfying answer or unlock the most secrets. It’s like a crossroads forking into innumerable directions, all unknown, leading either to dead ends or more crossroads and still more dilemmas. I take one turn and always wonder what I might have discovered at the end of another; I ask one question and immediately wish I had asked a different one in its stead. So many candidates now, gathering at the threshold of my mind to be elected, all equally tempting and equally uncertain in their promises. I want to ask everything and know everything at once. ‘Did killing Chamber help exorcise him from your nightmares?’ ‘Do you regret soiling your hands at all?’ ‘When will you be satisfied, if ever?’

But one question is the loudest, and the loudest voices are usually the ones that get heard.

“If that’s how you feel about gratuitous murder, then how exactly do you feel about my so-called ‘appetites’? You know they go far beyond killing the likes of Vanel and Chamber.”

Ciel's hand curls in a fist against his cheek. He wasn’t prepared for the change of subject. Is he at a crossroads, too? Facing a multitude of answers? In the time it takes him to decide on just one, my business phone interrupts the silence with a quiet ring. I mute it; Isabelle will have to wait a little longer.

“Is it terribly hypocritical? To treat you differently, that is?”

“Just me? By now you're far from a saint yourself.”

“Ha, you and I are not even close. I'm just a poor abused child while you're a full-fledged monster. Who would really condemn me? I have something called mitigating circumstances, and actual reasons."

“It's hypocritical. But we all have our double standards, so here's yours. Now, my question?”

“Fine,” Ciel says, “I suppose you make me curious. Humans have always felt an unhealthy pull toward the dangerous and the macabre, especially if wrapped in an attractive package. I fancy you in the same way one might fancy horror novels or violent movies."

“Ah. But I don’t think horror enthusiasts would enjoy living through the plot of their favourite stories at all. See, everyone seeks the thrill but never the actual danger. Everyone wants the macabre so long as it's on screen, on paper, away from their lives. Teenagers who walk into a 'haunted' house don’t actually want to confront ghosts, they want to fool around and make it safely back out. People write and devour books about ruthless murderers for morbid entertainment, but they wouldn’t be particularly entertained to face one in real life.” My voice lowers and my lips draw into a villainous smile. “I happen to be very much real, you know.” 

Ciel drums his fingers on the armrest. “I think you can agree that the thrill often tops healthy reason.”

“And are you the kind to leech off thrills, like me? I don’t believe you are.”

“Maybe I’m the kind to walk into a haunted house without caring if I make it back out or not.”

“Hmm. We shall yet put your fearlessness to the test, I suppose."

Ciel's brows fly up. “Oh? That sounded like a threat.”

“Are you threatened?”

He throws me a pitying look. “If only you were in the position to threaten me to begin with. Please, stage one more suicide and people will begin to wonder. Touch one hair on my head and you'll find yourself at the receiving end of my aunt's crusade—which you don't want happening, trust me.”

I chuckle. “Now, now. I was only teasing. I wouldn't touch a hair on your head, ever, and not because your aunt would tear me to shreds.”

For the first time today—for the entire time he told his story—I see a trace of vulnerability flash beneath the veil of his indifference. Such a well-kept façade, now cracking open. Chipping under one tender word, how uncanny.

“Right. Because I’m your special snowflake, or something.”

“Yes, or something.”

He scoffs, turning away. “Hmph. Snowflakes melt.” 

The words are barely a mumble and Ciel stands to his feet the moment they leave his mouth, but not before I manage to glimpse the blooming beginnings of a blush on his cheeks. He escapes one second too late.

My phone starts ringing again, and I let it. Ciel tells me where he’s going before he goes, but I don’t pay attention.

I sit still and think of the blush on his cheeks. Of his downward gaze and the small cough with which he cleared his throat. He thought he could hide it from me, didn’t he? _That look_. The one I have seen so many times on so many faces. 

You can't fool me, little one; I'd know it anywhere. And you can't really run, either. Not when I have finally enslaved you.


	21. Chapter 21

Ciel has braced himself for round two. I don't know where he'd been but I know what he'd been doing: concocting a strategy, tailoring his approach. Writing out scenarios to the sequel of our confrontation. 

Except I haven't planned one. I've been thinking, for his sake, that we might rest from the past and return to the present. In a mild, mellifluous voice that melts the tension off his features, I speak around the past as though it didn't exist. I make it a taboo, even the last few days, _especially_ the mortifying defeat he suffered this morning. Oh, he must want it forgotten so badly, having let an emotion escape the prison of his self-control; having fled after it in frantic pursuit and forfeited the game, all of him on alert. He’s caught it now, of course—locked it back behind his walls and thrown it inside the darkest cell, where he shall guard it more closely than ever—but I want him to think that his fugitive blush had slipped by unnoticed. I know how much he loves victories, and I’m willing to hand this one over as a gift. I need him to feel secure. 

And didn't he say that everything needs balance? Persecuting him over dinner would be in bad taste, and bad taste is the only sin of which I'm not guilty. Tonight I don't poke, I don't prod, I don't pressure. He needs room to breathe, and I grant it.

We’re in the present, then: inside the warmly lit hall of Maison Allard, seated in a corner so intimate that no one can see Ciel sneaking sips of my Cabernet Sauvignon. There is a candle, and shining silver cutlery on a spotless white cloth, and a window that spoils us with a dazzling view over the city. Our waiter—a swift-moving epitome of French excellence—has now arrived at our table with the main course, bowing and wishing us _bon appétit_ with a studied smile.

We should enjoy such a present, shouldn’t we? So enviably full of luxuries and aesthetic delights. It's the coveted lifestyle of the rich, and I'm definitely not one to turn away from vain pleasures. I can commit to this present for as long as it lasts, but Ciel is unable to let himself go for even one evening. All his capacity for spontaneous joy has been stamped out, and whenever he does catch himself trusting the flow of a moment, he is quick to recall that he shouldn’t. Even when I’m not digging through his memories, even when I immerse him in a discourse, even when everything invites him to sit back and unwind—he’s always glancing over his shoulder or looking anxiously ahead, beyond, into the uncharted trails of the future. It’s like his ego is split into percentages, and a small portion of him is always travelling in time.

In Paris, his thoughts keep going not only four years back, but hundreds. The city pulls him away from the present toward the wealth of history that had given it shape, toward the vast annals of disquiet and the passage of lives. Aren't plagues, wars and revolutions a far more nourishing food for thought? The past here is always vivid: reflecting in the stained glass of Sainte Chapelle, reverberating in echoes around the Place de la Concorde. It lives in the stonework, in the cobbles that pave the alleys, in the centuries-old monuments. It runs along the Haussmann boulevards and stews underneath the city, down in the dark of the catacombs, in a bone-strewn labyrinth of claustrophobic tunnels. It can be found anywhere, if one stops to look.

And Ciel looks. He goes out of his way to seek it out. All afternoon he roamed the lanes of Père-Lachaise, sacrificing his present for a date with the dead. He didn’t even take a book; only strolled and lingered among the haunting beauty of gothic mausoleums, breathing the still air and avoiding tourists (he pronounces the last word with utmost disdain, as though he himself wasn’t a tourist but a ghost whose peace they were disturbing).

He visited Proust, stopped by Molière. He took his time with Chopin—pondering the Great Polish Emigration that had cast him out of homeland to be laid in Paris soil—and then climbed all the way up to pay the same tribute to Wilde, going over his life's work until the finale of his decadent exile at Hôtel d’Alsace.

But he didn't stay more than a few minutes, put off by the sight of his sphinx-shaped grave. It was ugly enough by itself but uglier still behind the glass barrier that protected it, of all things, from kisses; from the pink-red lipstick marks imprinted onto the stone by adoring visitors.

I didn’t know they had been erased. Years of amorous pilgrimage, scrubbed off like offending graffiti. Has it been this long since I’ve last set foot there? Oxford days, now that I think about it. I’m not one to dwell on the passage of time, but even I must admit that it only ever seems to be growing faster. Quietly, inexorably, a whole decade has whizzed past me in a great big leap.

A clichéd observation: life is fleeting. Cemeteries confront us with that truth most profoundly, forcing to the surface what is otherwise pushed out of consciousness, but Ciel doesn't seem to mind being surrounded with evidence of human mortality. It's as though he takes comfort in knowing that his life is but a tiny drop in a boundless ocean. He can take the particle of his deceased joy, measure it against the staggering enormity of the past and find how miniscule it is, how irrelevant. He can weigh his misery against all late miseries and realise that someday it will cease to matter, effaced without trace by the implacable hand of time. Unlike Chopin or Wilde, the memory of him will not survive in hearts or chronicles; it will die, the way he thinks it deserves to, without ever affecting the future. All of his secrets and sufferings shall accompany him to the grave, whether it be an ugly stone slab or a magnificent mausoleum.

Ciel stayed at the cemetery until closing, letting the dead steal a whole day from his present. If he were to ever pick a motto, I'm sure he wouldn't pick ‘ _carpe diem’._ By the law of his reflective nature, he drifts away from reality; through the fault of his past, he neglects to cherish his present; between the pages of his books, he seeks to escape into the abstract. He’s so rarely _there,_ I notice, and that must be how he survived his years in Earl’s Court: by not being there. By living in a state of metaphysical anaesthesia.

But have I not succeeded in bringing him down to earth? First by curiosity, then by hatred, and lastly by infatuation? He’s come a long way since his first weeks in Hampstead, still drifting but in lower altitudes, and I must never let him slip away from me again.

I listen as he speaks, trying to gauge where we stand. Tonight feels a lot more like the talks we shared on January evenings, and the way he looks at me across the table makes me think he’s believed all my morning lies. ‘I don't know anything about Lau, I swear, and though my voracious appetites haven't been known to make exceptions, do trust me that you’re not on the menu.’ And it's a good sign that he's let me talk him into a stroll, isn't it? Even if with a scowl, with a roll of his blue eye. 

We go, then. There are so many places I could take him—places that come alive after nightfall, views that belong on the postcards—but he agrees to go no further than past Pont Neuf, grumbling about the wind and the too-narrow pavement.

We cross from the left bank of the Seine to the right, through the bridge that has served its purpose for four hundred years. Ahead of us marches a small band of Americans, stopping every dozen steps to snap a picture, and behind us trails a pair of teenagers conversing excitedly in a slang-filled French. There is a couple snuggling by the statue of Henri IV, then a few more ambling about as in a love-struck stupor, gazing dreamily at the lights across the river. I don’t know which irritates Ciel more: their blatant PDA, or the street merchant with his Eiffel Tower keychains that flash and blink like miniature Christmas trees, a tawdry nightmare worse even than the tourists it had been made for.

The full-sized tower itself is not far behind, sticking its golden neck above the rooftops and shooting its beam through the sky like a giant lighthouse. Next to it sits the Dôme des Invalides, ever so dutifully keeping it company on the skyline, and below to our left shine the lights of Pont des Arts, yet another part of Paris that has transformed since my last visit.

Only last year it weighed tens of tons more, bending under the burden of undying love professed on padlocks and cuffed for-presumably-ever to the bridge’s bars—all part of a trendy ‘romantic’ ritual that resulted over the years in a collapsed railing, a bulging growth of metallic ivy, and a mountain of keys thrown to the bottom of the Seine for a sentence of rusty sleep. Now the padlocks have been torn down and banned altogether; hundreds of thousands love confessions carted away and dumped like so much rubbish.

Good riddance, too. I appreciate the irony. It was a mass funeral of forsaken promises, for how many lovers have actually kept to their word? How much lighter would the bridge have been, I wonder, had only soulmates been able to seal their bond and toss the key? Light enough for them to have stayed locked, I’m sure.

Another clichéd observation, yet always relevant: nothing is eternal, and love least of all. I remember a poem by Apollinaire that compared it to the flowing, volatile waters of the Seine. Was it about Pont de Mirabeau? It would fit Pont des Arts better, I think, after the annihilation of so many immortal loves. Different bridge, same old story: “ _l’amour s’en va_ ”.

I look down at Ciel and cannot guess the substance of his thoughts, nor even their location in time. He’s busy contemplating the inky surface of the river, though with a less euphoric expression than those of the couples that pass him by. Our shoulders rarely brush, but it’s always him who draws apart once they do; he rights his course and walks indifferently onward, always keeping a few centimetres of distance between our bodies. As though he were afraid that people might guess what we are to each other if he came any closer.

Won’t he let me touch him tonight either?

He doesn't sleep on the far end of the bed, at least. His back is still turned but it no longer feels like a fortress. A wall, perhaps, but without barbed wire. Surmountable. 

I told lies that morning, but I did also tell one truth. He _is_ special; would he even be here otherwise? Would I be so patient with him, so considerate? Would I have wasted months on someone mundane?

No, I don't settle for less than special. It's all true, little one, and I hope you took that truth to heart. I hope it put down its roots in the bed of your mind and began to flourish, magnificently, in the fertile comfort of the night. Let it grow as you sleep, and bear us fruit much sweeter than the mistrust you’ve fed me for days. Let this truth be the lullaby that brings the loveliest dreams and blankets your vigilance with illusions of safety. Let it blind your other eye, the blue one, the one that always looks out for danger, and may it take away your sixth sense so that all you ever dare to rely on is _me_.

I know you find that truth flattering. It feels good, and it promises so much more. It makes your heart beat faster, though you may wish it wouldn’t. I say: let it happen. Don’t keep your feelings prisoner and don’t fight them when they flee towards the light – show me. I’m glad you still have them. They’re starved, and roughed up, and neglected—but oh so tenacious, aren't they? Refusing to die with the others. Kept alive by some madman’s hope. Day after day you leave them to rot alone in the dark, praying that time would take its toll, but they bang on the bars and won't rest until they're freed. Trust me, it’s safe now to let them out. Let me nurse them back into health.

And once you have yielded to the truth’s narcotic spell, be proud. You alone have earned it by getting where no one had got before you. Celebrate it like a victory and reap its rewards while you can, while the truth still stands true. Learn to seize the day and don’t neglect your present, for _I_ am your present and I want you to be with me in the moment. Cherish it, make the most of it, but never take it for granted. Not all truths are set in concrete, and mine tend to shift as rapidly as a current. Surely you keep in mind that nothing is eternal, and we do not have all the time in the world? Everything—like kisses on a tombstone and love locks on a bridge—shall one day become a thing of the past. 

***

My alarm rings half an hour earlier, making Ciel groan.

At some point during the night I've rolled over to his side of the mattress. I awoke for one hazy minute and dared drape my arm over his waist before sinking back into sleep. Now I awaken to find it snuggled against his chest, even closer than I remember. Kept in place by a pair of small, warm hands.

Ciel doesn't look surprised. He stretches, untangles himself from my hold and rubs at his eyes. 

Is today the day he lets me touch him? As I head for the shower with that very thought on my mind, his voice calls after me sleepily from the bedroom: 

“Run us a bath.”

And it's _us_ , not _me_. Two small letters making such a big difference.

I go and immediately turn on the tap. I make the water steaming hot, just the way he likes it. Just the way I hate it.

He tells me to close my eyes before climbing into the tub, but I’m not sure why I listen. His nightgown falls rustling to the floor and I don't even try to peek through my eyelids. He wants to pour more bubble bath into the water, so I let him pour until the foam is all but spilling over the edges. Now he asks me to wash his hair—no, _orders_ me to, for in spite of using the polite structure of a request he omits that little rise in pitch at the end, marking it with the flat intonation of a demand. He expects it to be carried out without complaint, and I'm not complaining. To me it counts as a win.

The bathroom is quiet as I massage his scalp in slow, soothing circles. Only the hum of traffic reaches us from eight stories below, faint as the dawning light that filters in through the white-framed window. All the while I am all too aware of Ciel's small purrs of content and the wet, warm press of his body against mine, but I hold myself back. Watching him sit between my legs with his back turned and scars glaringly pink against the whiteness of the foam and the tub and his own porcelain skin, my mounting lust dampens as quickly as it had flared.

“The least your aunt could've done was pay for scar removal,” I say, glaring, as if glaring could help erase them. “She wanted a shortcut to ease her guilt, so I'm surprised that she didn't take it.”

“But the whole thing's not even worth it,” Ciel says, leaning his arm on my knee. “For cosmetic improvement at most, but never complete removal. And besides, she would've had to take me there herself. That would’ve involved looking at me and talking to me. Not to mention she had no money to spare at the time.”

I rinse his hair, reaching for the conditioner. “I do.”

“What, you want me to try to get rid of the ‘battle scars’ that one day will get me all the ladies?”

“Too many might scare them off, I’m afraid. See, I don’t have a single scar and—”

“—and you still manage to woo stewardesses and pretty French professors,” Ciel cuts in, not without malice. He doesn’t like how often I mention Isabelle. “Then you’ll just have to teach me, I suppose. How to become a proper lady-killer.”

I brush a flake of foam off his shoulder. “Pun intended?”

“Of course.”

I tut. “Your wit leaves something to be desired. At this rate you won't get very far with the ladies.”

“I’m not sorry.”

I kiss the back of his neck, where end his scars, tasting the soapy bitterness of shampoo on my lips. 

He quivers. It can't be just me who's been on edge, can it?

“I know a discreet clinic back in London, and I think it's worth at least a try. I’ll get you an appointment for next week—okay?”

There is absolutely no reason for him to agree, but he's distracted. “Okay,” he concedes, uncaring, just to make me drop the subject, leaning into my touch and seeking more—but just as my lust stirs again, it’s quashed at once by the sudden sound of my ringtone. It comes muffled through the open door to the bedroom, making Ciel frown. He didn’t know I had two phones.

“Take your time,” I say, planting one more kiss on his nape before climbing out of the tub; partly because it could be urgent, partly because staying in the bath any longer would end with my smelling like a flower shop, which I didn't want on the day of my presentation. Wrapped in a towel, I get to my other phone just in time for Grell to dial a second time.

“Hiya, Sebby!” he trills into the receiver, and I cut in before he can say anything more:

“I'm away. Business trip. Paris. Try me next time.”

“Ooh, in that case—” he clears his throat, assuming a ludicrous accent, “ _Salut Séby, comment ça va_?”

I sigh. “If you got robbed again, tough luck. I can’t send you anything right now.”

“ _Non, non_! That's not it! You don’t think I want you only for your money, now do you? But say, when are you coming back?”

“Why?”

“I’m bored and I miss you, that's why! Can't you give me something to do already? You paid me, remember?”

Right. I completely forgot about Grell. It would be easier to send him after the cult, but I thought it best to keep him as an emergency plan B. The moment he starts probing around town and asking questions, the cult will be inevitably alerted—with unforeseen results. I don't need indiscretion, I need the advantage of secret reconnaissance and the element of surprise. I'd hoped Bard would bring me at least one clue, but I haven't heard from him since our expensive _soirée_ over seafood and vodka. Thus far, he was falling short of all expectations and proving to be a much blunter tool than Grell.

“Henry Barrymore?” I ask, opening the wardrobe. 

“Please, I’ve done my share like a million years ago. The fights are doing mighty well, by the way; the bloke’s filling his pockets like mad. Which begs the question, how come he's still kicking? Why’s the vigilante slacking off, hmm? Poor doggies are being forced to rip each other to shreds as we— well, maybe not as we speak, but a lot in general. Woof, woof. Have you no heart?”

“No.”

The tone of Grell’s voice takes a vehement turn. “Fine, screw the doggies, but what about me? All fun no work. Nothing to keep me distracted. Same shit day in, day out. I'm kinda going stir crazy over here, having all kinds of thoughts—like what happens if I shoot a little too much up my veins, or something. But since you have no heart I guess it doesn't concern you, huh?”

It's been a while. Whenever he gets like this I have no choice but to pepper him with soft-spoken nothings until he's appeased. I have to assure him, time and again, how invaluable he's proven to me over the years and that I cared for him as much as I was capable of care at all. Pretty, empty words that keep him in line and leave my lips with so little effort, almost as if I were reading the lines of a TV script – saying things I didn't mean, delivering emotions I didn't feel. The art of persuasion at its finest.

It’s not until I put down the phone that I realise my own disappointment. I wouldn’t have minded if Grell had brought news of trouble—a connection missed, witness found, evidence overlooked—enough for the police to begin suspecting there might be more to me than meets the eye. Wouldn't that be thrilling, to be suspected?

Oh, it would. To have to improvise and convince everyone anew of my virtue. To no longer just _flirt_ with danger, but ask it to dance and feel its breath on my cheek. To be pushed up against a wall and slink away at the last instant, just before it lays its claim.

How unfortunate that I have to put business before pleasure. I can dream of thrills, but duties still come first. I think of this lecture as a maintenance procedure for my repute and my mask, a dull prerequisite for the excitements to come. I need this to go well, but then there's no other way it could go.

And rather than rehearsing my speech, I find myself admiring the look of my Huntsman suit in the mirror.

Three-piece, as usual. Form-fitting but not tight, classic but not old-fashioned. Structured jacket, double-breasted waistcoat, slim straight trousers—all of it in a deep, dark chocolate hue in place of my timeless pitch-black, all cut from fine Merino wool with just enough cashmere to add a luxurious softness but not too much warmth. Quite the sight to behold, this brand-new masterpiece of Savile Row tailoring, especially when paired with a foulard tie, elegant Derby shoes and a sleek, simple briefcase from Italian leather. Yes, quite the indulgence to my vanity. 

Ciel steps into the bedroom just as I finish fastening my cufflinks. Freshly out of the bath, he has thrown on his thin navy gown and seems in no hurry to dress.

“I thought you were going to the Mazarine Library?” I ask, straightening a sleeve that needed no straightening. 

“Not just yet. In a while.”

He ogles me with scrutiny so intense it has me asking:

“How do I look?”

Ciel snorts. “Please. You bloody well know how you look.”

He strolls over and smooths a hand on my lapel, chin tilted to meet my eyes. One pupil blown, the other unseeing. 

“Are you nervous?” His lips curve in a smirk. “Need a pep-talk, or a hug? A cup of herbal tea?”

“Maybe a kiss for good luck.”

“Ugh, how corny.” His hands pass inside my jacket and link around the small of my back, as if asking for a slow dance. He stops to take a whiff of my cologne, the winter Clive Christian that I shall wear all spring and perhaps even through summer. He’s never had to say a word for me to know why it’s his favourite; why it soothed him out of panic in the crowd of Oxford Street.

Because it's different from all the perfume he’d smelled on the strangers. Complex, sophisticated, seductive. Given a minute to settle on the skin, the rich strength of topmost spices blends smoothly into Mysore sandalwood and vanilla, revealing a creamy essence that most men would reject as too feminine.

Ciel takes deep, reverent breaths. I watch them expand his chest and undulate his shoulders. They fill his lungs silently, slowly, rolling through him in a sensuous rhythm. With my own breaths, I take in the bubble bath sweetness that sticks to his skin like syrup and wafts around him like a candy cloud. The hot-water flush on his cheeks only deepens and darkens while his body, not quite pressed against mine but achingly close, radiates warmth through the thin satin of his gown. 

How gossamer seems this cloth against the layers of my suit. Just one light pull, and it would part. Just one brush of my hands, and it would slip off his shoulders and pool with a whisper at his dainty feet, baring him to the dawn and to my covetous eyes.

I bend down, Ciel inches up. His lips, only yesterday so severe, now succumb to mine with redeeming softness. Chastely, gently, he bestows me at last with his good luck kiss, but I don’t feel blessed enough with just one. I push my tongue deep and curl a hand around his throat, making him moan. He sways on his toes and grips my waist harder, no longer with the innocence of a slow dance but with the urgency of lust, the hunger for skin.

I don’t want to stop. A few creases on my suit wouldn’t hurt, and it would be over before I got too sweaty. I could lay him on that chaise longue by the window, where the light is brightest, and feast my eyes on all they were denied that first and only time I had him. I could untie the string of his gown, spread his pink knees and tease him with my tongue and my fingers until he’s begging, until he’s so wet and loose that I could sink inside him with one hard thrust and then _watch_ , not just imagine. I could kiss his flushed fragrant skin, drink every moan straight from his mouth, and steal as many good luck charms as I wanted— 

But I’m pressed for time, aren’t I? Wouldn’t it be better to use his mouth? It might take some convincing, but that's precisely what I do best. A caress or two, a few sultry whispers, a gentle push to the head... sooner than later, I'd have him sinking obediently right down to his knees. 

He wouldn’t even bruise them on the soft carpet. And I would undo my zipper so that all he would have to do was open up, not bite and look pretty. Would he get right down to it, or play coy? Turn away just before I push past his lips? He might try to tease me, give a few timid tugs and licks before closing his mouth ever so slowly over the tip, not even sucking, but then I would probably lose all patience and force myself almost deep enough to make him gag. He would look up at me with wide, startled eyes—a little teary too, I hope—whimpering and trying to hold onto my hips as I drive over and over into the heat of his mouth. Oh, I may not smell as sweet down there or taste much better than the strangers, but I’m sure he would grow to like it. I could mutter words of praise, run my fingers through the damp hair I helped wash and not pull out until he swallows—

My gaze falls on the watch peering from under my cuff. I don't even have five minutes.

“Well, I must be going now,” I sigh, stroking him under the chin. “But I will be back for dinner.”

Ciel looks me up as I leave. “You’d better.” 

***

For the presentation, I let my alter ego take over. Dr Sebastian Michaelis did splendidly, I'm sure. His research had been meticulous and he winged the debate without a stutter.

Isabelle, for one, failed to point out a single fault. She’d been hoping to take the whole speech apart and murder him with her unsparing critique, but Dr Michaelis was nothing if not immaculate.

Over coffee, she shares with me her reflections. She's one of those people who order the blackest, strongest brew and never touch sugar—to which I relate. She drinks from her cup in-between rushes of animated insight, crowning the end of each point with a lengthy sip, as though caffeine was fuel for her rhetoric and required constant refills to sustain her train of thought.

The more she speaks, the more I am struck by her vivacity of manner; by the way her large, jewellery-adorned hands move fluidly in a rich repertoire of gestures and her voice brings every word to life with almost theatrical modulation. Such stark contrast to Ciel's reticent body language and dry, sober tones! Isabelle paints her pictures in much brighter colours.

Noticing me withdraw completely into silence and yield to her avid ranting, she throws me a merciful look and allows her busy hands to rest on the table.

“Wake up, _Docteur_ , monologue's over. Time for something out of the blue.”

“Oh? You’ve never cared to warn me before.”

She slumps into her seat, unwrapping the little chocolate she was served along with coffee. “Okay, so get this. By accompanying you since Monday and having kept your fangirls at least remotely at bay, I think I’ve earned my right to be a little nosy. Yes or no?”

I tilt my head. “Wait, is this your way of asking if you can venture a personal question? Could it be that somewhere deep down you have tact? Consideration for other people's privacy?”

“Maybe, but don't get used to it.” She snickers, rotating her empty cup on the saucer. “So tell me, where do you run off to every evening? I've been planning to buy you dinner, but you keep vanishing into thin air just before six.”

I am tempted to lie, even about so trivial a matter. I derive an inherent pleasure from having my lies believed, small and big ones alike. Other times, I am tempted to tell nothing but the naked, nauseating truth. Watch it work its insidious magic.

“Considering the amount of gossip that has been filtered through you so far, I'm sure you've heard that I'm looking after my late patient's nephew?”

“Yes, a little bird may have told me...”

“Well, he wanted to come along with me to Paris, and all my evenings are reserved for him.”

She blinks. “But until evening, he’s on his own?”

“That’s right.”

“Whoa. Hasn’t he been through a lot? You leave a thirteen-year-old _traumatised_ boy alone in a strange city for hours?”

There it is, that tender core. That confounding kindness. 

“Ah, he would scoff at you if he heard you say that. He’s mature for his age, and copes well enough alone. Trust me, I do keep his trauma in mind.”

Isabelle shakes her head. “You’re a brilliant therapist, Sebastian, but I’m not sure if you’re the best parent. If I were him—having watched my closest relatives die one by one—I would be scared to let anyone out of my sight.”

And could I take it any other way but as a challenge?

“Maybe you should join us for dinner and judge him for yourself.”

Her bracelets cascade down her wrist as she lifts up a hand. “Oh, I don’t know. It's your family. I may be nosy but I’m not, like, intrusive—” 

“Don't try to add yourself more subtlety than you have, it's decided. And it's your treat.”

She agrees.

And though I'm eager to see what she makes of him, there is no way they can get along. The combination of Ciel’s secrecy with Isabelle's penchant for snooping; his default dislike of people against her over-extrovertive temper; his ingrained pessimism in contrast to her _joie de vivre_. No, this wasn’t meant to be love at first sight—or it was, but tragically unrequited.

Ciel greets the news with mute disdain, and the only change of sentiment I can expect is for that disdain to become vocal. I’ve ruined both his good mood and my chances to pick up where we left off in the morning, but I can't be too sorry. With my judgement put to doubt, I daresay I had no choice.

The moment Isabelle comes into sight, Ciel pulls back his sleeve and makes a show of checking his watch: tapping the dial with his index finger and giving it a textbook British tut. “So this is the fashionable French tardiness, I gather,” he says, watching her stride through the restaurant hall to our table.

I look up from the menu. Isabelle is dressed in a clean black jumpsuit and low black pumps, never straying from her ‘less-is-more’ dress code that applies to everything but jewellery. Not that she needs dresses or extravagant designs to look stunning; there is an elegance to her simplicity that turns more heads than a showy cleavage. She has an air about her, like potent perfume, for which there is no other word but ‘class’.

I stand up for the ritual of cheek-kissing. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Ciel watching us half with resentment and half with horror—expecting, no doubt, to be next—but Isabelle is quick to catch onto his reluctance and introduces herself with only a smile. Whatever points she earns with it, however, fail to offset the fact that she arrived ten minutes late when Ciel has been hungry for more than an hour.

At least our waiter wastes no time. He lists the day's specials in such a hurry that I cannot tell where one dish ends and the other begins. Ciel responds in kind, spitting out a ready sequence of orders, voice blasé but livening audibly when he reaches dessert.

Isabelle hangs onto every word. “That was some flawless French! Are you bilingual?”

Not one muscle moves in Ciel's face. “All I did was read some positions off the menu.”

“The answer’s yes,” I step in. “His parents spoke a lot of French around the house, and he visited his aunt here in Paris when he was nine.” 

We get our appetizers. The next question she asks is predictable, inevitable, unfortunate. Ciel chooses to answer it for himself, putting down his glass of Badoit with that piercing, one-eyed look that takes some getting used to.

“One time, I forgot to take out the teaspoon out of my cup and accidentally stabbed my eye with it as I was drinking Earl Grey.”

“Oh.” Isabelle looks to me for support. No one who meets Ciel can tell at once if he's joking; even I still catch myself struggling to detect his sarcasm. “Um. Funny.”

“Funny? I wasn't laughing when—”

“Ciel,” I admonish him and turn to Isabelle, tone apologetic, “He lost it in a car accident.”

“And he doesn’t like to talk about it,” Ciel concludes, impaling one of his shrimps on the fork. Oh, I’ve never seen him so petulant. 

But Isabelle apologises, undeterred. She tries a different approach, then another. Changes her strategy once, twice, even thrice. There is an admirable persistence to her efforts, but the match has been fixed for her loss since the start. No, Ciel is not even playing—he refuses to humour someone he considers not only a stranger, but a beginner. His mouth remains sealed, his walls unbreachable, and his gloom unabating.

Isabelle puts up the white flag. With monosyllables and negligent shrugs, she has been pushed towards retreat. It falls to me, the mediator, to fill up the awkward silence—and the moment we start speaking, we go to a place that Ciel cannot follow. Even if he so desired.

It's not often that he lacks the knowledge to speak up on a given matter. Just this once, as we discuss the congress and the newest experimental drugs and the changes we would make in the DSM, Ciel gets to feel like a witless child excluded from the intricacies of grown-up conversation. He knows next to nothing about my field of work, save perhaps for the out-of-context snippets on antisocial personality disorder he'd picked up all those months before—back when he was still trying to figure me out and ransacked my library for clues. 

As it happens, the very subject does come up at one point over dessert. Isabelle has taken to sharing with me all her progress, and I have proven myself to be a most helpful adviser. Ciel, who appeared to have stopped listening to us halfway through the main course, jolts at once from his feigned inertia and surprises Isabelle with a question:

“You're writing a paper on ASPD?”

She shoots me a quick glance. “Yes—focusing on the far end of the spectrum, to be more accurate. On the most extreme cases.”

“Psychopaths, then,” he says, and only I seem to detect the subtle drop of scorn he injects into the word. “Have you met one?”

“Well, it's based on real-life subjects and personal experience. But I don't think that's—”

“What are they like?”

She traces a finger around the foot of her glass, never idle. “They're a lot of things, but two in particular: unworthy of trust and unworthy of occupying the thoughts of a fine young man such as yourself.”

“So you would know one, if you saw one?” Ciel presses on, ignoring her comment.

“I mean— yes, I like to think so. I have studied their reactions in length and have a solid idea of their general nature.”

I clear my throat. “Isabelle is just being modest, for once in her life. As of now, I daresay she's one of the top experts on the subject worldwide.” 

Ciel pins his gaze to my smiling face. 

“Dear me. And Sebastian is being courteous, for once in his life, instead of trying to disprove me every step of the way—”

“Debate, not disprove. There is a difference.”

“See what I mean?” She laughs, taking a sip of wine. Ciel turns to finish his crème caramel without another word, and though I have failed so many times in trying to decipher the incomprehensible workings of his mind, for once I can read his thoughts as easily as if they were printed on paper.

The dinner draws to an end.

Outside there is noise and wind and traffic; there are lights and people and peals of laughter from the cafés across the street. There is the mesmeric pulse of Paris life, and Ciel wants nothing to do with it. He nods goodbye to Isabelle, dodges every pedestrian and leaves to wait for me in the taxi.

“So?” I ask, stepping aside to let through a scooter.

“ _So_? It was marvellous. I very much enjoy talking to brick walls. Oh, and I just couldn't stop staring at his lashes. Unusually long for a boy, don't you think?”

With Isabelle, it's refreshingly easy to tell when she's joking.

“I'm joking,” she still makes clear.

“I know. You have a habit of masking your failures with humour.”

She crosses her arms. “I wasn't aware I was being tested. But true enough, I’m at a loss. He’s difficult, that one. And yes, mature, like you said—but isn't that just sad?” She glances wistfully at the taxi. “Children don’t grow up so fast unless they're forced to.” 

Her mouth is pursed, frown solemn. She looks like someone who has gone to visit an animal shelter and wished they could take every single cat and dog home. Her saviour complex is a burden and her empathy a sickness—inverse to mine. I've always suspected her interest in psychopathy stemmed from the fact it couldn't be cured. 

The wind tugs at her curls, blowing it through the hoops of her earrings. “But don’t think you’ve proved your point here, or something. I wasn’t wrong; it’s not good to leave him alone. He needs to be around other people.” 

“He needs his space.”

“No one is self-sufficient. He doesn’t have to be a social butterfly, but you can’t convince me that it’s healthy to shut everyone out. As his parent, you should encourage him to go out into the world. And as his _therapist_ —” she pauses to watch my reaction, confirming her guess, “you should send him off to cognitive-behavioural, _in a_ _group_. I know you know that, and I’m positive you would have done so long ago already. If he weren’t family, that is.”

“So now you’re going to lecture me about work ethic?”

“No, just giving you a friendly reminder. It’s different when emotions come into the equation; we fail to see certain things in an objective light.”

Oh, Isabelle. But I don’t have that problem.

“Now here's the pot calling a kettle black, _Professeur_ ,” I rejoin with a playful smile. “Between the two of us, aren’t you the one constantly fencing with countertransference? None of your patients are family, yet you still treat them like your small darling children.”

Isabelle bursts with laughter; head thrown back, curls bouncing.

“ _Merde,_ is it that obvious?” She swipes at the corner of her eye. “The thing is, I’m well aware of my weakness. That’s why I only take patients of a certain type, and only a few at a time. So that I don’t tire myself out with compassion for my darling children.” She puffs up her cheeks and blows out a sigh. “I’m not sure I could handle someone like your Ciel, though. So cold, so closed-off.”

No, you probably couldn’t. Not the way he is now.

“But you seem like a good match for him, I’ll admit. So long as you work on bringing him out of his shell and don’t encourage his hermit mentality, he should turn out all right. And he likes you very much, I noticed.”

I smile. Thank you, Isabelle; that’s all I wanted to hear. And watching him reject you has only made me feel more special. 

“Does he? I’ve been getting mixed signals from him lately.”

She nods. “He shows it so subtly, but I can tell.” Her eyes cut to me with sudden slyness. “Unlike you, _Docteur_. On you, it shows plain as day.”

Oh. 

What? 

My brows draw together. “Shows how, precisely?”

Isabelle considers me in a moment of silence. Sizes me up from the tips of my Oxfords to the ends of my wind-blown hair. “So you can be dense sometimes too, huh? Good to know. It’s adorable, especially with that cool act you like to put on. But I think I’m going to keep my observations a secret; it’s not often that I get to hold something over the great Dr Michaelis.”

Tsk. Way off the mark, Isabelle; I wasn’t trying to exhibit any signs of affection. If it’s plain as day, how come you failed to notice _in what ways_ I like him, exactly?

The taxi honks, no doubt on Ciel’s request.

“Oof. That was my cue, I think. But I have to admit—I’m a little heartbroken,” says Isabelle, trying to sound cheerful. “Not a fan of myself, was he? I'm not used to being anything but adored.”

“Oh, don’t take it personally. Like you said, he likes me. He was just jealous of the attention I was giving you instead of him.”

“Aw.” Her features ease into a lenient smile. “You must be such good friends.”

“I suppose.”

“It's a relief to know he's in good hands, at least. Apologise to him for hogging the spotlight and do something about those morbid interests of his, will you?” she says before we kiss goodbye, her cheeks cold to the touch, and stands watching as we pull away from the kerb.

She still hasn’t noticed, has she? I’m her ‘far side of the spectrum’. My hands are anything but good, and Ciel would fare much better if she were the one getting with him into the taxi and I the one being left behind on the pavement. 

It makes a good prompt for a guessing game, in fact. What if she were his therapist, what if she knew all that I know? She never would have freed him from the shackles of his past, I'm sure, but she might have lengthened the chains enough to allow a future. She wouldn't have saved him from his hatred, but she might have taught him how to contain it; the way she contains her own rampant emotions and the way I contain my urges more often than not. And for him she would have lost all control, broken her hands trying to fix the unfixable, shared with him every sleepless night and cried for him all the tears he never shed. She would have worn herself out with compassion only to find it unwanted; she would have given up her heart and soul only for it to be rejected.

But in the end, would she have won him over? Slipped through the cracks in his walls and reached some small buried part of him that still yearned for human affection? It took _me_ a while, too. Perhaps her depth of feeling enabled shortcuts and angles that I couldn't even imagine.

Whether or not that were true, she still wouldn't have come to understand him in the same ways as I. Instead of the sweet, bloody revenge he so desired, she might have delivered him at most to disappointing justice; to a fate filled with still more hardship and ‘virtuous’ mettle against vengeful temptation. The ‘right thing to do’, most people would call it. The ‘against-all-odds’.

Would it have been possible for Ciel to make that choice?

Never on his own, no. Alone without guidance, he has plummeted straight toward sinful perdition. But I do think he could have thrived in the ‘good’ hands of someone like Isabelle—and I do believe that somewhere, among all the crossroads, way _way_ back at the beginning, there laid a small sideways path that could have led him to something resembling salvation.

Such a shame that for a long time now it's been too late. He’s tossed aside every lifeline and forsaken every opportunity for help. All of the ‘what ifs’ belonged in the past, and now Isabelle too was shrinking away into the distance, waving one last time as we disappear around the corner.

She’s all that could have been, but I’m all he’ll ever have.

Driving through the streets of Paris, alive and alight with yellow, Ciel and I each look out a different window and think entirely different thoughts. And his thoughts frustrate him, bring a grimace upon his dim face and have him muttering half to me half to no one at all:

“Why could I see it, but not her? Not anyone?” 


	22. Chapter 22

Black ties, chamber music, _crème de la crème_ and extravagant waste of food. The congress must end with pomp and circumstance, no less.

“I feel like having too much champagne and embarrassing myself before the psychiatric lobby,” says Isabelle as we arrive hand in hand at the party, looking about in appraisal. 

“Haven’t you already done the latter during your presentation?”

She nudges me with her elbow. “I need a partner for the former.”

“You’re just curious to see what I’m like when drunk.”

She clicks her tongue and pushes a glass of champagne into my hand. “Precisely.” 

I take a sip, looking up at the frescoed ceiling. Everything is gilded: the columns, the chandeliers, the swirling ornaments on panelled walls. In size as in opulence, the hotel ballroom has all the shining splendour of a royal palace, now overfilled with doctors and professors rather than courtiers or nobles. Some of them have brought along plus-ones, if purely as an accessory; all they can do is smile and nod along to conversations they cannot keep up with, trying their best to make up in charm for what they lack in expertise.

What else is there to do? I drink, and I mingle. When the main organiser gives a speech, I dutifully join the applause. I shake hand after hand, pose for a few photos and trade pleasantries with the sponsors (instantly identifiable by their pot bellies and distinct air of importance). My lips are hardly ever without a smile, but this time _everyone_ is wearing masks and _everyone_ is on their best behaviour. It’s like a masquerade of false decorum with a variety of hidden attractions. All night I can amuse myself with studying the careful mannerisms and picking up the Freudian slips; with sieving out valuable data from the morass of small-talk; with observing the shows of dominance and placing my bets in duels of wits.

I feel at parties as a child does at a playground. The first I ever attended was eighteen years ago, when Mrs Greenhill received an invitation to her cousin’s anniversary banquet in Gloucestershire. I was only a couple of months older than Ciel at the time, although I had already grown so tall it would have been impossible to tell we were the same age. For the first hour I kept hearing, ad nauseam, what a fine gentleman I was growing up to become and how proud must be my parents of such a talented, handsome, well-mannered son, to which the Greenhills would respond with patting me either on the shoulder or on the back and saying that it was all very true, that they were very proud of me indeed.

But we both knew I was only a substitute. A slapdash emergency solution. The one who should have come in my place had died not too long before and her name still hung unspoken. I never knew what kind of a daughter she had been, but I do know what kind of parents she had been raised by: the kind with the tendency to project every ideal and ambition onto their offspring to make them into a reflection of all they had achieved (or an instrument for all they had failed to achieve). A milder form of ‘Tiger parenting’, as it were, combined with the indulgent favouritism of an only child, all coming from a place of misguided yet unconditional love. 

I, however, was not the biological child they would have accepted despite all flaws and failures. I wasn’t supposed to be problematic, demand too much attention or have too many needs; I was supposed to be nothing more and nothing less than a talented, handsome, well-mannered figure of a son. Our relationship had the callousness of a business contract, where I provided my services as a model child and they obliged to pay me with inheritance.

Of course, as is often the case with business transactions, one of the parties was not being entirely honest. I had run an elaborate con and defiled their legacy as soon as it fell into my hands. It still could have gone worse for them, though; had they adopted anyone else but me, their entire design would have crumbled while they were still alive. After the initial joy of getting chosen and ascending from poverty into affluence, any other child would have rebelled or fallen into depression. Few would have agreed to play their polite puppet, for few could have withstood being as lonely or as unloved.

But I was fine with both, because I felt neither. And after everyone at the banquet had enthused over my fake seemliness, I was fine with being quietly forgotten – the way a media scandal is forgotten as soon as there comes another. I became unseen, unheard and uncalled for. Superfluous like an extra set of cutlery. While the rest of the children dipped under tables, chased each other laughing through the mansion and pestered their parents, I used my invisibility to commit petty crimes. I broke into one of the private bathrooms, spiked a random drink with Xanax and watched who would collapse; I fed chocolate cake to the hosts’ dog and stuck a needle into someone’s egg with caviar; I swiped a little girl’s asthma inhaler and sent it tumbling out of the window onto the trimmed garden grass below. 

Such silly games, and yet I was entertained! My appetites have evolved dramatically, claiming in their wake more lives than just that of a dog, but one thing has not changed: even attending a different party, even lacking the innocuous guise of a child, in a way I still remained invisible. I fooled everyone just the same. My camouflage had worked even in its most primitive form, let alone after I’ve developed it into the controlled, synthetic perfection that it is today.

How much more would I have to drink for both layers to fall apart? 

Not much, I reckon. Not after replacing champagne with cognac. I don’t intend to abstain now either, when the party is finally in full swing: more voices, more laughter, more social blunders. Time flows and liquor flows alongside it.

Presently, with an almost empty glass, I am stuck entertaining the president of the Austrian Psychiatry Association – a stout woman with a double degree and a younger, entirely decorative husband at her elbow, who keeps interrupting her sentences and undressing me indiscreetly with his eyes. In the background, the ensemble is playing Haydn’s _Emperor_ quartet—the opening movement, I believe—while my phone keeps on buzzing stubbornly inside of my pocket for what has to be the fourth time. 

It stops, immediately recommencing. I wedge a swift excuse into our discussion on Gestalt and make my way onto the terrace, where smokers stand catering to their foul habit in small groups of two and three. It’s quieter out here, and colder. Swept with wind but warmed with drink, I pick up the phone to the disgruntled sound of Ciel’s voice:

“You said you would be back at midnight.”

I glance at my watch. Forty minutes past. “I didn’t realise I had a curfew. _I’m_ supposed to be your guardian, not the other way around.”

“Then come guard me. How much longer?”

“Why, are you scared to sleep alone?” A pause here, for effect. “Or maybe you’re scared that _I_ won’t sleep alone?”

Ciel’s only comeback is a scoff—an overly loud, overly derisive scoff that was meant to express denial but achieved the exact opposite effect.

And then, “Wait, you sound a bit off. Have you been drinking?”

“I have.”

“You _shouldn’t_ be drinking.” Ciel’s voice – hiss-like, condemning – slithers sharply through the receiver. 

“Don’t patronise me, little one. We make our own ‘shoulds’, remember? Sweet dreams.”

And he tries to have the last word, but I am insolent enough to hang up.

He doesn’t redial.

There is that ecstatic period in every relationship, usually after first getting together, when passion is at its highest and nothing seems capable of getting in the way. In short, it’s all sex and sweet nothings and ‘I don’t want to fight’. Humans tend to treat new possessions with the utmost care, and lovers are no exception; they fuss and overuse pet-names and can’t keep their hands off each other for even a day. After all, the first logical move after acquiring an object of lust is to sate that lust to the fullest.

If relationships had seasons, the first few weeks would be summer. Everything that came before would belong to spring – the courtship and blooming affections and the first butterflies in the stomach – while everything that came after would fall into the steady decay of autumn and inevitable winter. Some autumns might turn out bearable, even beautiful, but most would pass in a stretch of unending gloom: sentiments withering like leaves, memories buried under a mantle of mud, desire cooled off by the frigid rains of routine. The heat would either drop by small degrees or tumble at once through a rapid shift in the atmosphere, and then the whole cycle could either repeat or stagnate or cease altogether.

Ciel and I ought to be just beginning our summer. After such inclement spring and fluctuating currents, the heatwaves should be keeping us awake through most of the nights. Instead we seem to have our own microclimate, without predictability or seasonal progression.

Perhaps he knows that summers of love tend to be as brief as they are sweet; if the sun shines all day every day, it gets tiresome. Unwanted. He must have guessed I would be particularly susceptible, and lapse sooner than later into autumnal tedium. It’s a good move for him, to skip the summer—but how _maddening_ nonetheless. I know he longed for it no less than I.

Push, and pull. I fell for the oldest trick in the book of seduction, letting him lead me on for the entire week. Waiting obediently for permission. Now it was time for the tables to turn, and I liked how taken aback he was when I invited Isabelle to dinner after our lovely Thursday morning. Now let’s have him fret and pace around the room like a worried housewife. 

And let’s go get another drink.

I slip through the terrace door and return to the bright-lit ballroom. Where last time I withdrew and pushed away my glass of vodka, this time I don’t hesitate to get a refill. I do feel drunk—my head is pulsing and my senses are itching—but I don’t _look_ drunk. No sway to my step, no stutter to my words, no impropriety to my demeanour.

Maybe it’s because I’m used to keeping things buried inside me. Maybe Dr Michaelis cannot be so easily overthrown. Or maybe my brain is so abnormal that even alcohol affects it in different ways.

Isabelle, in turn, looks affected in all the usual ways: giddy, bright-eyed, a little unsteady. Separated early in the evening and thrown into a whirlwind of socialisation, we were left to catch each other’s eyes every now and again across the crowded room, between backs and above shoulders and over the tops of other people’s heads. She’s not difficult to spot; one only needs to look for the fanciful glint of her rings and bracelets, which shift and wave in emphasis to her already brisk narration. She stands out naturally in every setting, even in her simple gown from tan silk, unadorned with a single patch of lace or embroidery or even a ribbon. Only her collarbone is exposed, and the lean muscles of her arms and shoulders, olive skin shimmering with scented oil.

More than once now I have been asked, with an all too suggestive curve of the lips, if the two of us came _together_ or merely arrived together as colleagues. “What a shame,” I would hear upon answering the latter. “You’re both single, and seem to fit together so well.”

And we do. She’s my type, and I’m hers. I have always found older women to be more stimulating and less clingy than the younger. Were it not for present circumstances, I would have long since tried to—

Ah. What am I on about? There aren’t any special circumstances. And if I manage to keep it secret, there won’t be any consequences either. Why would I be holding back? 

I start across the room, gait still steady, ignoring those who try to stop me for a word. But just as I am about to reach Isabelle, my blurring vision detects someone familiar.

Someone I’d like to talk to even more.

So far he has succeeded in keeping himself out of my immediate vicinity, but not this time. This time he missed the moment I emerged from the terrace and failed to duck safely out of my sight. He lost me, but I found him. 

Will is his usual self: all work no play, prim and proper to the point of pretension, stiff like a telephone pole. On a good day he looks uptight, on a bad day he looks as if his soul had been sucked out of him into some hollow, fathomless void. He never smiles and shows no traces of having a sense of humour, which is probably why I found him standing by the wall and watching the ensemble all by himself. I was surprised he’d been invited in the first place, much less agreed to come, but he does know some of the board members and must have felt it rude to decline.

Seeing me approach and seeing no way to retreat, his serious features assume an openly hostile air. I thought it impossible to get any stiffer, but he does.

“Why, look at us both,” I open with a wide smile. “Same Alma Mater, same class, years later in the same place... I mean that literally, of course. Physically. In figurative terms of success and intellect, we’re whole worlds apart.”

He doesn’t even blink. “You don’t have to be so harsh on yourself, Michaelis. I’m sure you’ll get somewhere given enough hard work.”

I laugh without opening my mouth. “Speaking of work, how was your presentation? I’m sorry I couldn’t find the time to attend, but I do remember seeing you on Thursday. How did you like me?”

“Big fan, as always.”

“Indeed, as always. I’m sure you’ll be writing a critique for one of the journals in the nearest future, but you won’t dispute now because you can’t come up with any good counter-arguments just yet, can you? I mean, you were so eerily quiet during the discussion.”

William pushes up his spectacles, a habit that hasn’t changed any more than the man himself. “Why is it that every time you insist that we talk and force me to stoop to your level? There are plenty of volunteers around to indulge your narcissism, freak. Go pester them instead.”

I tilt my head. “But you’re special to me, Will. After all, you’re the only one who could ever see past my bluff.”

It’s only for a few seconds, but I let my mask drop. A wolfish grin contorts my mouth and bares my teeth. And whatever William sees in my eyes, it drains all the blood from his face.

“Yes, congratulations—you were right about me all along! If I’m to give you credit for anything, it’s for that. Remember what you told me that one day after psychopharmacology? That first and last time we sat next to each other in class?”

He answers mechanically, as though it were a quiz. “That no amount of meds could set you right.”

“Yes, and that I couldn’t deceive you. See, back then I found that so impressive, so exhilarating, but then you just decided to do absolutely nothing about it. You knew, and you still left me be. I’d say that some of the blood is on your hands as well.” 

“Blood,” says William, a half-question. Like he didn’t know the meaning of the word.

“Oh my, did you think I was one of the non-violent ones?”

If he weren’t sweating, he’d look like a statue. A group of our colleagues passes close by, laughing, oblivious of the exchange. 

“Let’s get you better informed, then. From a purely statistical standpoint—and I know how much you love statistics—last year was the most productive one of my career thus far. The five vigilante killings earned me a modest but official 3,8% of London’s annual homicide rate, while the unofficial toll included three missing person cases, one alleged suicide, and two more victims outside of England. Illustrated in a graph, my activity would form a slow upward trend stretched over sixteen years, which I hope creates a clear enough picture of what you failed to stop from happening.”

William’s mouth is set in a tight line, our gazes levelled. It’s a shame that he’s not shorter, for I would have very much liked to leer down at him at this moment.

“You’re welcome to tell everyone, of course, but who will believe you? Allow me to present a ready answer: absolutely not a single soul. Given our mutual history, you will seem like a petty liar grappling for dirty tricks to undermine my superior position. No one _knows_ you, Will; who could tell what truly lies behind that stony exterior? Who could vouch for your integrity, hmm? Because half of this crowd would readily vouch for mine. I mean, even Professor Rousselot is eating out of my hand. Your testimony will be dismissed as a bunch of spurious claims and envy-spawned delusions.”

“Why?” he forces out, face white as a sheet.

“Why what?”

“Why tell me.”

“Silly, silly Will. Can’t properly psychoanalyse anything, can you? I’ve had one glass too many, but mostly I’d like to see you try to stop me—and fail, miserably, as you have failed every single time in measuring yourself against me in any capacity.”

I never find out if this manages to elicit a more interesting reaction than silent terror. We are interrupted by the untimely arrival of Isabelle, who pats me on the back and quips in a half-sober voice:

“Hey, mission accomplished. I accidentally spilled a drink on Mrs Gelzer’s brand-new Givenchy dress and was laughed at for mispronouncing ‘hemiasomatognosia’. Why don’t we—” She stops at the sight of William’s face. “Gosh, is everything all right? Are you unwell, Mr Spears?”

I dry my glass of cognac. “Poor Will simply cannot hold his liquor.”

“Yes, I am a complete lightweight,” he says without tearing his eyes from mine. It’s a struggle – his instincts scream at him to look away, but looking away would mean submission.

“Aw, don’t worry; I’m done for the evening too. One more glass and I might get more on people’s clothes than just champagne. You staying, Sebastian?”

I’m going. And as we turn to leave, William tries to hide the tremble in his hands.

***

We take the same taxi. The clock shows three past one, the streets are strangely empty and Isabelle has a million things to tell me at once. I watch her in the semi-darkness: the faded colour of her lipstick, the splashes of light that hit her cheek, the little mole on her slim ankle and the way she swings her foot back and forth to some imagined tune. Not a single word registers in my consciousness, but whatever story she’s trying to tell seems to warrant a most vivid gesticulation.

Ciel attempts to reach through one more time, but I reject the call. “Don’t wait for me,” I type and press send. He doesn’t respond, but I’m sure he’ll stay up all night if he has to.

Soon our taxi slows down and pulls up in front of a tall building from grey stone. It’s not until the driver repeats the address that Isabelle realises it’s time to get off, and that we won’t be seeing each other for at least a year.

She clutches at her purse, tongue flicking briefly over her lips. Doesn’t liquor make her bolder? On one hand she’s anxious to ask, on the other she hates the thought of parting with me on purely platonic terms. As far as chances go, this is her last. And if she doesn’t offer, I will. She deserves a proper goodbye.

“So remember that pen you lent me the other day? Fancy British brand, Conway something? You probably want it back. And we could have a goodbye drink or two.”

She pays the fare and I follow her through the heavy double door. Once in the lift, she presses number eight and doesn’t say anything all the way to the top. This is the first silence we’ve ever shared; whenever one threatened to fall, she never failed to fill it with a ready supply of words. This time, however, she’s not in the mood for talking.

I step in. Her flat is modern, spacious, uncluttered. She practises the same minimalism in home decor that she does in personal style, and the only thing of which she has too much are books.

She throws me a funny look in the doorway, as if wondering why we weren’t making out and shedding each other’s clothes like in the movies. Her gaze drops down.

“What’s with the gloves? It’s warm.”

“What about that drink?”

“Uh. Wine or something stronger?”

“Stronger.”

I take a seat on her sofa, buzzing with anticipation. She takes the time to change into a loose red nightshirt and comes back into the living room with a bottle of whisky and only one glass. She places my borrowed pen on the coffee table and sits herself awkwardly beside me, as though ill at ease in her own home.

She finishes pouring my goodbye drink, and I push the glass to her side of the table.

“Oh no, I’ve had enough. I’m not feeling so great,” she says with firm resolution, sliding the glass back towards me. 

So I pick it up and slam it in front of her with a loud bang, spilling most of the whisky on her carpet.

“Drink, or I’ll force it down your throat.”

She’s like a paused film frame: frozen still. My mask peels off for the second time tonight, and she doesn’t seem to recognise the man behind it.

“It’s better if you drink, believe me. Consider it anaesthesia, and I’m never that generous.”

The breath she’s been holding leaves her in a long, shaky exhale. A million thoughts must be galloping through her mind, and most of them must be thoughts of escape. From the way her eyes sweep over the room, I can tell she’s calculating her chances.

I’m bigger, stronger, closer to the exit. I may have drunk more but I carry myself better. She has no chance of a secret 112 call, for her phone is in her purse and her purse lies by the doorway. Screaming would only serve to cut her time shorter, and attempting to smash my head with the whisky bottle would only end in a mess.

Having realised all this, she shrinks into the sofa. Next come thoughts of ‘why’, and they don't take her long; we’ve always understood each other with uncanny ease. Her agile mind, even blunted, connects the dots in a mere moment’s flight. Only now it’s too little, too late. 

“I-I’m not your type. I haven’t done anything wrong, I don’t even—”

“The vigilante is just a dead experiment. I kill whomever I want. Now _drink_.”

Her hands—those groomed, expressive hands that seem to live a life of their own—tremble violently as she brings the glass to her lips.

“More.”

And she pours more, the entire glass, this time downing it with certain impatience. Anger, even. 

“Good. Now wait for it to kick in.”

Our second silence is long and barren. Isabelle leans her head back and stares at the ceiling, hazel eyes glassy, growing used to the idea that she was going to die. I can hear the change in her breath as the alcohol spreads through her system and poisons her blood. I bask in the moment, counting the minutes as life slips slowly through her fingers.

And at some point, she laughs. A mad, gurgling sound in the back of her throat. 

“I mean, I kind of knew it. I knew you were too good to be true, that you were hiding something. But this has gone beyond my wildest expectations.”

“You haven’t had much luck with men, have you?”

“This isn’t bad luck, this is—” She makes a sweeping gesture with her hand, as if tracing an arch over a star-pricked sky. Her eloquence already eludes her, and she switches halfway to French. “This is a whopping fucking catastrophe and it’s all my fault because I didn’t see it coming when it was my _job_ to see it coming.”

“Truly, not even a hunch? Not even after Ciel gave you a hint?”

Her mouth hangs open.

“Oh,” she utters, voice breaking. “Oh no. No, that poor thing.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Don’t tell me!” She stretches out a hand, shielding herself from an invisible blow. “Don’t. Spare some of my faith in humanity, please.” 

So I don’t tell her; it would take me the entire night, anyway. She sways forth, winding both hands into her locks. “Oh no no no I’m getting wild assumptions.”

I don’t have to order her to drink. She grabs the whole bottle and chugs from it in long, great gulps; throat bobbing, eyes wrenched shut.

“I haven’t hurt him. Not me.”

“Not _yet_ , you mean.” She releases her mouth from the bottle with a pop. It’s almost empty. Whisky trickles down her chin and she wipes it with her wrist, smearing the remains of her lipstick.

I cross my arms. It somehow rubs me the wrong way, the ‘not yet’.

“Everything’s a matter of time, of course. I hadn’t planned to hurt you either. Not even while I was getting ready for the party, not until we left. See, it’s nothing personal. In fact, I really like you. And you know why?”

She shrugs, suppressing a burp. “Empaths and narcissists are naturally drawn to one another.”

“Precisely! We’re polar opposites. There’s me, faking emotions; and there’s you, trying to conceal them. There’s me, studying those who feel deeply; and there’s you, studying those who don’t. We had an interesting dynamic, you and I, but this is just what I’m like when drunk. Sorry.”

Whatever cogs in her brain are still functioning begin to turn. They labour and stutter, but they turn.

“It’s not”—she clears her throat—“it’s not too late yet, you know. You’re sobering up, and we’re talking. That’s good, that’s already a lot. You can’t help wanting the things that you do and yet you still manage to hold yourself back. That’s _really_ good. You think before you act, and you wait, and I know that you could do so much more. You could seek help on your own terms and live in the open, but if you go on like this you’ll get caught and I don’t want that. You deserve better, you deserve a chance.”

I huff. “You think _you_ can manipulate _me_?”

“No!” she urges, and it sounds genuine. “I really think that. It’s how I feel.”

And isn’t her altruism unnerving? I understand apathy and egotism, but pure selfless good is confusing. 

“I’m literally about to murder you, Isabelle. Why are you still being nice to me?”

“You can’t help it,” she repeats, shaking her head too many times. It ends up making her dizzy, and she steadies herself on the armrest. “You can’t help it, you were born like this, and I don’t give up on anyone ever. I’ve been trying out treatments, f-for the paper. There are things that can be done.”

My mouth splits into a grin. “Oh, _this_ I have to hear. How would you treat me?”

She searches her memory, blinking and blinking. Spelling out carefully so as not to stutter.

“I-I’ve had results with anticonvulsants. Phenytoin, and carbamazepine—”

“—which can reduce _impulsive_ violence, but never premeditated. Only spontaneous combustions of rage. Whom did it work on, hmm? That moron from your paper who knifed an old lady because she took his spot in a queue at Carrefour? Please, don’t lump us into the same league.”

“Clozapine,” she blurts, pleased that she remembered the name. She lifts a finger, holding the thought. “Yes, Clozapine has shown the most promise. In six out of seven test subjects it—”

“Yes, yes, I’ve read the results of your study. It also works only with secondary psychopathy. Next.”

“M-Maybe SSRIs, with how they affect the amygdala—”

“Oh no, forget it. I’ve tried taking Sertraline for a month, just out of curiosity, and it made me _much_ worse.”

She’s run out of arguments. Her eyes rove in all directions, as though she had cheat sheets plastered around the room and searched for the one containing the answers. 

I sigh. “Is that all you’ve got? Your only solution would be to dose me with meds until I’m all dumb and docile? No cure, no change. No long-term improvement, only neutralisation. What, you don’t even want to try to talk me into feeling empathy? You haven’t invented any procedures to rewire my nervous system, or developed any magical emotion pills? Green for joy, blue for sadness, pink for love?”

She shakes her head solemnly, missing the sarcasm. 

“No, of course not. You’ve failed to make the smallest difference. If that’s all your research’s been good for, Professor, then you might as well wrap me up in a straitjacket and call it a day. Same effect for a lot less money, don’t you think? It won’t save me, but it will save others _from_ me. Or maybe you’d like to make it a bit more permanent? How about a lobotomy, like in the good old days? Stick an ice-pick into my eye, twirl to the right angle, give it a few taps and see if it helps me start caring? No? Well then you could always dump me into an ice bath or fry my problematic brain with ECT; turn up the voltage again and again until I finally see the error of my ways. If you can’t cure me, you could at least turn me into a harmless vegetable. A drooling cretin who couldn’t hurt even a fly.”

And she actually looks _sorry_. She actually pities me.

Our third silence descends, brief yet poignant. My shoulders slump and my voice drops to a half-whisper. Numb, defeated.

“So this is it, then. If you don’t have the answers, nobody will. I can’t miss something I’ve never had, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t understand what I’m lacking. There are experiences worth living, emotions worth feeling, but all I have in their place is a void. I know there’s a better way to be, and I thought you might have known how to get there.”

Her breath hitches and her eyes go wide. She extends a hand towards my shoulder, slowly and gingerly as if trying to pet a wild animal—

And then I burst with insolent laughter straight into her hopeful face.

“I can’t believe you fell for that, even drunk!” I curl my gloved hand into a fist and dab at the corners of my eyes. “I never learnt to fully cry on command, but I can make myself look a little teary. Not bad, is it? Works like a charm!”

She stares at her rejected hand, sulking. “I fell for it cause you’re not like them _._ Not like the ones I’ve been studying, not exactly. You have different— _vibes_ , I guess. Different aura. Even now, when you’re not masking.” 

“Of course I’m not like them. I’m better.”

“Yes, but in a good way. Right?” She tries to convince herself as much as me. “There’s something good there.”

“Oh, this goes without saying. By all accounts, I’m an upstanding member of the society: I pay my taxes, recycle my rubbish and smile at my neighbours. I’ve helped more patients than you, and even gave once to charity. How’s that for good?”

Isabelle bites petulantly at her lip. All her scientific reasoning has collapsed into the logic of a child – a stubborn, dim-witted little child who refuses to believe that Santa is all a hoax, or that her goldfish has gone to heaven and will never come back.

“No, you don’t get it. I don’t mean there’s only good _about_ you—like, _inside_ you too.”

Oh, I haven’t laughed this hard in years. Maybe ever. And she just stares at me dumbly while I do so, her brain too fuddled to lead a substantive conversation. All her cogs have sputtered and ground to a halt.

“There must be something,” she insists. “You know, like that small bit of _yang_ in every _yin_? Like— the way you looked at that boy. At Ciel. That was good, wasn’t it? I-I know it was. I could sense it, and I sense things that others can’t. It was genuine, it was good. I felt it.”

“Ciel?” I put a hand to my chin, as if actually considering her point. “I fucked him. Does that count as good to you? I mean, it definitely felt like it to me.”

Whether it’s the imagery or that last dose of whisky, Isabelle puts a hand over her mouth and throws up. She tries to swallow, but most of it trickles through her fingers and drips onto the leather of her sofa.

I can’t have any more fun with her in this state, can I? She can barely sit straight or keep her eyes open. And she’s started rambling now, too. Slurring. Her words string together into bulks of nonsense and stumble into one another like domino tiles. Something about patients and students and what they were all going to do without her.

“Julie,” I think she says. “Everyone always leaves her and now I’m gonna leave her too. And Max—”

It’s time. I throw her arm around my shoulders, heave her upward and push her face away just in time for the contents of her stomach to land on the carpet and not on my finest tuxedo. Just how much did she eat at the party? The hors d’œuvres were first-rate, I have to admit. She tries to yank out some of my hair as we shuffle across the room, but the motion comes out so clumsy and sluggish that I ignore it. Her body is already as limp as a fresh corpse, unable to take one step on its own.

She gets sick again outside. Vomit pours out of her mouth and nostrils in one great flood, staining her red satin nightshirt and splattering all over the balcony tiles. The wind carries over the acid stink of half-digested food and plasters Isabelle’s hair to her clammy mouth.

I tut. “This railing looks tricky. Unsafe. Not nearly high enough, too. You stumbled outside for a gulp of fresh air, tripped on your own vomit”—I make sure she steps in the puddle, dragging her under the armpits—“and then you crashed into the bars, so horribly drunk, and tipped just a little too far over the edge. A tragedy.”

“No one’ll believe this about me,” she croaks out, surprisingly lucid. “You’re gonna get caught cause it’s all bullshit. And then you’ll be no better than the rest of ’em morons, you’ll be worse. Locked up in solitary confinement, maximum security. All alone.” 

“ _Finally_ you’ve worked up some spite.”

She sniffles. “And no one’ll come visit you, just a bunch of psychiatrists coming to gloat and trying to write papers. They’ll rummage around in your sick brain and prod at you like a lab animal cause you sure as hell aren’t human, you’re—”

I grab a fistful of her thick curls and slam her hard into the railing. She slumps over like a ragdoll, bent in half, hanging suspended over the thirty-meter fall.

“We’ll just have to see what happens, won’t we? Or _I_ will, at least. As for you”—I motion at the view from her balcony—“this is the last thing you’ll ever get to see in your life.”

And it’s not a bad view at all. A small but private panorama of Parisian lights. The shimmering orange of the street below looks not deadly but peaceful, unassuming, as though the fall was actually nothing to be afraid of. All the windows in the opposite building are either dark or curtained, and our sole spectator is the half-moon hovering dimly on the cloud-speckled sky.

But there are no stars in sight, sadly. Light pollution has erased them and left but an endless stretch of blank black overhead. Wouldn’t it be nicer if she could see the stars one last time, even if blurring before her eyes?

“I’ll tell you what, Isabelle—my apartment in the sixteenth has a little balcony just like yours, and you can see the Eiffel Tower from it if you lean out just far enough and stretch out your neck, like this." I twist her head to the left. “Can you see it?”

This only makes her groan. “Oh, I hate that fucking thing.”

And that’s the last thing she says before I push her down. The iron bars vibrate in unison as she tumbles soundlessly to her death.

There is nothing like it. That blood-stirring, spine-tingling rush of euphoria. That bright, glittering aureole that frames my vision. It’s incommunicable. It’s poetry. I lack nothing, and there is no better way to be.

I watch her fall, leaning almost far enough to fall myself. Through the subdued hum of night traffic, I hear a crunch as she hits the pavement—or I only imagine that I do, for the sound comes close to my ear with almost unnatural clarity. Wet, abrupt, satisfyingly brutal. I lick my lips, squinting to see the pool of blood spreading around the pale body. I wish I was down there in the light, admiring and storing away each detail, like a painter preparing to recapture the moment on canvas.

Did she fall straight on her head? Did her brain ooze out onto the cobbles? Are her eyes closed or open?

My answer is a scream. Short but shrill, belonging to a late pedestrian who got lucky enough to see her up close. I envy him, but it has to be enough. I have to go. 

No, not go— _run_. Duck inside the apartment and dash out onto the staircase. Tumble down all the dozens of steps because the lift is too risky (did it have a camera?), then burst through the back entrance onto the adjacent street. And don’t I have just the most infernal luck? No one sees me again. The taxi stand is just nearby. I get in and drive away.

When the tiredness finally hits me, I all but pass out in the backseat and then later on the kerb. I don’t think I’ve ever been this exhausted, nor did I even think it possible. It feels weak, too human. 

But it was worth it.

It’s nineteen past two when I enter our flat, the lights are still on and Ciel has already dozed off on the sofa. His legs are curled up to his stomach and his face is buried in a stack of pillows. He probably wanted to lie down just for a few minutes, just to rest, fully intent on giving me a piece of his mind the moment I walked through the door. I flip off the light, as if he might still see me.

Should I carry him to bed? No, it might wake him. And I can barely hold my own weight, besides. Wasn’t there a blanket somewhere? In the other bedroom? I’d better check.

Quietly, now—mind the door handle and the creaking of hinges. Is it in the dresser? Yes, right there. Soft and woollen and probably green.

I double back to the sitting room and drape the blanket over Ciel’s shoulders. Has he always looked this serene while asleep? I can’t resist; I lean closer. The pale, dawn-like dark of the room obscures almost nothing. I look and look, though my eyelids fall and fall.

How long has he been out? I touch my fingertips to his warm neck and count the beats. 47, give or take. Slow like his breathing. No REM, no dreams, not the slightest flutter of eyelids.

Early stage 3, I think. Only just entering deep sleep. I wish I could plug him to an EEG and watch the whole cycle like a silent movie: the rise and fall of his brainwaves with every spindle and spike in the pattern. I wish it could display his dreams to me like a projector, or at least code their meaning in the alphabet of frequencies and amplitudes, so that he could keep no secrets from me even in slumber. So that I could learn his mind intimately from within, until I know its depths better than he does himself—in consciousness and unconsciousness alike.

My eyelids give in and I fall forward, stopping just short of Ciel’s face. His breath warms my cheek; my hair grazes his jaw. He shifts beneath the blanket and sighs, restlessly, as though already worrying about what happens once he wakes up.

I press the lightest kiss to his forehead, drag my feet to the bedroom and collapse into the cold, vacant sheets.


	23. Chapter 23

I take a shower, get dressed, brew coffee. A day like any other, except I should have started it a few hours earlier.

And my head is _pounding_.

I find Ciel out on the balcony with a book, wearing that warm oversized jumper he wore all winter around the house. He turns as I enter the room and watches me swallow painkillers with silent deprecation, exuding about him a tangible air of calm before the storm – like a parent preparing a lecture for their disobedient child. For now our exchange ends at ‘good morning’, but I’m sure he has a well-rehearsed reserve of insults just waiting to be unleashed at the opportune moment.

I join him outside, greeted by the warmest weather and bluest sky we’ve seen all week. My memory stirs when I spot the side of the Eiffel Tower peeking from behind the buildings on the left; I don’t remember everything from last night, and it makes the aftermath of it all the more exciting. How bad of a mess have I made? Only now, having finished my morning routine and snuffed out my headache, do I proceed to unlock my phone and behold the avalanche of notifications.

E-mails, text messages, application alerts. A long string of missed calls from colleagues and unknown French numbers. But before I can attempt to ring anyone back, I am interrupted by a series of knocks coming from deep within the apartment. Sharp and rapid, as though the person on the other side has been already kept waiting for far too long.

Ciel’s head snaps up from his book, but my heart does not even flutter. Not a single beat skipped; I just go and open.

The policeman at our door has singularly disgruntled features and puffy, drooping eyes – not the kind one gets after a night of bad sleep but the kind one earns through various and systematic hardships of existence. He looks fed up: with life in general and his job in particular, counting out the minutes to his lunch break and wishing someone else had been sent in his stead.

“You should really learn to pick up your phone, sir,” he says with a quick flash of credentials, either knowing I can speak French or not caring whether I can or not. 

“I’m sorry, I’ve had a long night. What’s this about?”

“That long night of yours, in fact. The congress party? Which you attended with one Isabelle Rousselot?” he asks like it happened ten months ago, not just ten hours. “We found out what we could from your colleagues, and we’d really like to sort things out before you go back to London.”

Disoriented blinking. The hungover, give-me-a-break look of someone unprepared to deal with reality. 

“Yes, I’m leaving tomorrow, but—did something happen at the party?”

As bearer of bad news, the policeman does his best to summon a semblance of gravity upon his worn-out features. He straightens his hunched posture, waits until I’m all braced for impending shock and says, “Last night at exactly two o’clock, Isabelle Rousselot fell to her death from the balcony of her eighth floor apartment. She had a lethal dose of alcohol in her bloodstream and died instantly upon impact.”

Nothing, at first. Temporary torpor. Four seconds of blank staring as my brain struggles to process the news. And it’s terrible news, of course, but I’m someone who’s used to handling the worst. My dose of shock must be carefully measured; just one tremble of lip, just two shakes of the head as I finally piece things together. No jumping brows, no theatrically widened eyes. I hold onto my breath and then punch it out of me in a sharp exhale, pursing my lips into a rigid line. Words fail me. 

“Now, you were seen getting together into the same taxi just after one o’clock. Perhaps you could come to the station and relay to us last night’s events”—he sees the look on my face and holds up a hand—“purely for the record and purely as a witness, of course. Standard procedure. What happened seems rather straightforward from what we’ve seen on site, but we did get an anonymous notice this morning how you might have been—well, further involved in the accident, and it’s simply our job to follow up.”

 _Further involved_? No, you received a notice that I was downright responsible. From Will, I’m sure. How very thoughtful.

Except you really shouldn’t have told me this, Mr Policeman, but I understand why you did. I look so trustworthy that you just couldn’t help yourself, could you?

I blow out a wretched sigh, run a hand through my hair and look around to get my bearings. “No, no, I understand. Of course I’ll come. Let me just—”

“Wait, you’re going out?”

The policeman blinks with bemusement at the sight of Ciel, who had been hiding around a corner and only just emerged from behind my back.

“Just for a bit,” I say, “there’s one thing I—” 

“But it’s our last day!” Ciel cries out in protest. “And you promised we would go to Grévin! You never have time in London, and last night you even bought us tickets!”

The policeman catches on, scratching at his cheek. “Last night?” 

“After he returned home drunk,” says Ciel with a sullen pout. “I was sleepy and angry so he said he would try to make it up to me, and when I said didn’t believe him he went ahead and bought us tickets. I’ve always wanted to go to a wax museum!” 

“Right. And what time was that, do you think?”

Ciel gives a faint shrug. “I dunno exactly. Late. After one.”

The policeman turns back to me. “So you booked tickets online. On this laptop?” He points to where my notebook lies closed on the coffee table.

“Ah, I was tired and completely forgot. You’re welcome to have a look, if that helps clear anything up.”

He glances at his watch, motions at me to go on, and peers over my shoulder as I unlock the computer with a print scan and a password. Sure enough, my browser history shows the official museum website with a timestamp of one thirty two, while on my private inbox I find an automatically generated confirmation of purchase. Even I had no idea that Ciel knew my credit card details.

“One thirty two...” The policeman does the math in his head. “With the night traffic... more or less. Maybe more. You came straight back?”

I wrench out another sigh. The lift _did_ have a camera, I’m now sure. And the taxi driver would remember that we got off together. 

Oh, I’ve left so many loose ends. Glorious.

“I did stop by Isabelle’s. I wanted to make sure she got there safely, and to collect the pen she’d borrowed from me a few days back. But I didn’t even step inside.”

“A pen?” The man’s voice lifts marginally in suspicion. “We found a black fountain pen on the coffee table. I don’t remember the brand, but it started with a C. I’m presuming it’s yours?...”

Wait, did I actually leave it behind? Curious; I was sure I’d slipped it into the pocket of my tuxedo.

And it’s a big problem if I hadn’t, because that pen was one of my favourites.

“Hmm. Yes, that does sound like mine. You see, Isabelle didn’t actually return it.” Now I’m embarrassed: twisting my lips, averting my eyes. “I asked her about it when we went up to her flat, but she insisted that I give it to her as a sort of... keepsake, I suppose. A parting present.”

Whatever the policeman was about to say, he ends up biting his tongue and scribbles something down in his notepad. “Right, I see. Just one more thing—did Miss Rousselot have drinking problems? I mean, that you knew of? Or that you suspected?”

My face takes on a pensive air. “Well, no, but she’d been through a tough week. She mentioned troubles with two of her patients and claimed to have botched her presentation. She was a hopeless perfectionist, you see. I do remember her telling me how much she needed a drink, but I thought she just needed to unwind after all that stress she’d been under, and then...”

“And then?”

My tone turns reluctant, as if I’m forced into sharing something I’d sworn to keep secret. “I worried for her, at the party. One drink after another. It didn’t look like regular stress-relief at all.”

“I’ve heard you weren’t exactly going easy yourself. Sir.”

“True, but I know my limits, and Isabelle almost crossed hers. She spilled champagne on one of the guests and I had to convince her to go home before she got sick. And then later, upstairs, she kept insisting that we have another drink before I leave Paris.”

“And you rejected her.”

“Well—that’s a strong word. I politely refused and suggested that she go straight to sleep.”

“Which she didn’t, and then replaced you with your _pen_. Drank a good couple of rounds with it, actually.”

Oh my, how insensitive. I can see that Mr Policeman is trying hard not to laugh, and how even dare he? Gossiping on duty and making fun of a poor, drunk, lovesick woman? So recently and tragically deceased?

I frown. “A couple of rounds?...”

“Almost a whole bottle of whisky at once, in fact. I’m surprised she even made it out on the balcony.”

“Well I can’t wrap my head around it. That’s just—”

“—so much unlike her?” He shrugs. “I hear that all the time. No one’s ever the type to do anything, it seems. But sometimes you just can’t tell what goes on in another person’s head.”

“True.”

“All right then. That’s enough for me for now, but please drop by the station tomorrow morning before your flight. We’ll need an official statement, and may have some further questions about the case.” He turns to leave, none too discreet in his hurry. “Have a good trip to the museum. And, um, sorry for your loss.”

I nod and see him out, still wearing my best imitation of sadness. On the opposite end of the room, Ciel is likewise still holding up his ‘normal teenager’ front.

And then we’re alone again, immediately transformed, shedding our masks the way one sheds an overcoat in the doorway. Ciel crosses his arms and leans against the wall, glowering at me belligerently above the sofa. Time for his lecture.

“ _Don’t wait for me_. How dramatic. I mean, I knew you were going to do something stupid once you sent that message; I just didn’t know _how_ stupid exactly. What, pick up a whore around Pigalle and stab her spontaneously in an alley? Surely you’d have enough reason not to try anything more than that?” Ciel shakes his head, conveying what disapproval he couldn’t through words. “You’re lucky I bothered with an alibi for your pathetic, drunken arse. You’re lucky the timestamp checked out, you had more luck than brains. Was that some sort of test? Or does it simply excite you, monster, to teeter on the edge?” 

I grin with impudent delight. “Oh, it certainly does. But you, little one, excite me so much more.”

Ciel flushes angrily. Whatever insults he may still have in store, I’m not interested in hearing them out. I want nothing but to ravish him this very instant—and the best part is, I can. I no longer have to confine my lust to the prison of mere fantasy, even though I’ve been forced to put so many of these fantasies on hold. Sometimes, with all the games we play, it’s easy to forget that he’s already mine. 

I start drawing closer; Ciel starts backing blindly away. He opens his mouth to make another point, but his back hits the wall and he’s pinned into place, squirming in vain to break free from my clutches. I do like it when he’s a little stubborn; once I lean down to kiss him, he turns so that the kiss falls not on his mouth but the side of his cheek, the hard ridge of his jaw, where I linger awhile before moving down to the taut, twisting length of his neck. He resists only for the sake of resistance, pushing at me with as much force as conviction: absolutely none. I can feel the bob of his throat as he swallows under the hot graze of my breath, and the frisson that shoots through him as I lick along his earlobe, and the wild thumping of his heart as my hands slide underneath the folds of his jumper. Profanities tumble half-coherently from his lips—both English and French but none of them pretty, none of them working—all while his touch-starved body leans into mine as though he were about to swoon, knees buckling at the exact same moment I sweep him off the floor into the sheltering cradle of my arms. And once there, with a last muttered curse, he gives all of it up and dives in to kiss me. A hungry, hot-blooded kiss that tastes of café au lait with exactly three spoonfuls of sugar. 

We stumble, intertwined, past the doorstep into the bedroom. Ciel’s fingers work quickly through the buttons on my shirt, ripping the last one open before I drop him on the pillow and reach to tug off his trousers. He offers his hips to me so readily, so willingly, and once he’s left in nothing but his jumper I kneel on the bed and crowd him against the headboard.

He must be so hot in all that wool; thick, knitted, coarse from use. It covers him almost entirely, draping over his splayed thighs and slipping halfway down his shoulder. How uncomfortable it must feel, rubbing against his hard nipples and suffocating his sweat-sticky skin. 

I unbutton my fly and pull down the zipper. Ciel swallows, entranced, shifting his legs fitfully across the sheets. Watching me as I peel off my underwear and take out my pulsing cock.

Isn’t this so much better than doing it in the dark? I can see every minute twitch of his muscles, every little pearl of sweat that beads in the hollow of his throat. And such lovely, lewd rouge has spilled out across his cheeks; such neediness brims in his half-lidded eyes. If I could just hold him down and ram inside without foreplay, I would—but he’s not ready for me as he was that first time, and now I’m supposed to be _gentle_ and _patient_ despite all the strain I’ve already had to endure.

I don’t think I can do that. And it feels like I might spill as soon as I push inside, like I might not last even a minute.

Wouldn’t that be a waste?

I wrap a fist around the head of my cock and squeeze, wringing out droplets of pre-cum. Once I start jerking myself I can’t stop, already too close to the brink, and Ciel can only keep watching as I tense up and spurt all over his cherished jumper, over the sheets we’ve kept so clean for the whole bloody week. 

He blinks up at me with large, clouded eyes, face shaping into a look of confused betrayal. As if I’d promised him dessert and then swiped the full platter from under his nose. 

“Have you— already—”

I lean down and rub my lips on his cheek. “Mhm. You don’t mind, do you? I’m afraid I’m not as patient as you, _mon petit_ … but don’t worry, I know how much you enjoy dragging things out. Now we can take all the time in the world.”

Ciel groans. And then groans again, louder, in a fit of childish annoyance. What he needs is fast and rough and _right now_ , but he won’t get it.

I pull the jumper over his head, freeing him from its stifling confines. The friction builds static and makes his hair stand adorably at the ends. He’s naked now, stripped bare, and that small simple fact throws me into a disproportionate state of wonder. 

I may have had him but I have never been truly allowed to _look_. A part of him was always concealed from me by one obstacle or another – by too-thick darkness, lengthy nightshirts, silken quilts or linty white mounts of foam. But now there’s not a single thing in my way, so I trace every detail and memorise every contour, patient enough to just look without taking.

And there is so much to drink in at once. All that white softness bathed in oversaturated noon light; the rosy nipples and delicate outlining of ribs; the play of shadows upon the smooth, curving plane of his stomach. Beautiful, yes—and then lower. The small, crescent arch of his hipbones. Two soft thighs pressed coyly together, fidgeting under my wanton gaze, and between them a curved pink cock lying flush against his belly.

“Are you done?” Ciel asks, folding one leg over the other. Trying to hide.

And of course I’m not done. Done looking, perhaps, but now I lean down to trace the same path with my lips as I have with my eyes. He’s so _hot_ to the touch, all tense and shuddering with uneven puffs of air, so desperate for the release I intend to deny him for longer than he’ll be able to bear it. 

“You _could_ try begging me,” I say, knowing well that he won’t. I want simply to torture him with the perspective, to dangle that insolent notion in front of his already damaged pride. Make him picture it, consider it, and groan out once more but in scandal.

I wait, listening to the beat of his heart. So powerful, so close to my ear. And then, instead of a rain of curses or outraged cries, Ciel plants his hands gently on either side of my head and mutters, “Please.”

My throat clamps down. I stay with my lips pressed to his breastbone, eyes closed as if in prayer. 

_I wasn’t prepared_. I didn’t think he’d beg anyone for anything ever again in his life. Not genuinely, not like he means it. I was sure that ‘please’ had been crossed out from his vocabulary, banned from usage and replaced with a troop of more biting words. But now his ‘please’ rolls through my mind, as fresh and real as the first time he spoke it, a titillating echo that compels me to give up and do every single thing that he begs me to do. No word has ever undone me so completely.

What is this? Does he not want to play games anymore? Are the rules different in bed and he’s willing to submit without a fight? Or is it all on purpose, is he trying to make me snap? 

“Sebastian, _please_ ,” Ciel whines, snaking his legs around my hips, and that’s all it takes for him to cripple my composure. The heat in my loins is back as quickly as though it had never left.

I suck in a deeper breath, bracing myself for another ‘please’. And it comes: hushed, hopeful. A little sulky as I break his embrace and kiss my way down his quivering chest. 

Then another, sharper, as I tease the tip of his leaking cock, and then one more as I take all of him into my mouth – broken, breathless, dissolving at once into long moans of relief.

He lets the word go after that, thinking he’ll no longer need it. His back arches and his guard drops as he revels mindlessly in that first taste of pleasure. But then I pull away, without warning, and the lost syllable finds its way instantly back on his tongue, bursting out of him with feverish urgency—‘No no no please don’t stop’—so I go down on him again, and pull away _again_ , cutting off his release just as I sense the first spasms rippling throughout his heated body.

Ciel keens, scratching furiously down my shoulders. His next ‘please’ is both a curse and a command, a petulant sob of an entitled brat who can’t believe he’s being denied. What else can he do?

I put my lips around him for the third time. And just as I feel him coming again, just as I begin to pull away, he takes rough hold of my hair and forces me back on his cock. He pushes at my head and digs his heels into my spine, thrusting up so he’s all the way at the back of my throat, but then I graze him with my teeth and he has no choice but to stop, whimpering pleas and apologies into his crumpled pillow, into the back of his hand.

He’s so beautiful in his torment; dizzy with desire, tremulous with thirst. And it doesn’t look like he has strength enough to keep acting out, not anymore. Even his eyes have lost their spark of defiance, begging me just as sweetly as his mouth. All of him at my mercy.

I reach for the bottle of lube, left unused in the bedside drawer, and lift his right leg under the knee. Such a pretty sight he makes, closing his thighs in shame and then spreading them wide in need. I slick up a finger and probe him gingerly, gently, testing the tightness. It slides in almost without resistance, a slow breach from the tip and up to the knuckle.

Did he do it carefully last time, like this? Or did he rush through it and just let the stretch burn, hurting himself for my pleasure? Wriggling with impatience in his bed before crawling so eagerly into mine?

Second finger. A kitten-like mewl, a buckle of hips. He couldn’t reach so deep on his own, could he? Couldn’t curl his delicate, inexperienced fingers as well as I, or draw such lovely little sounds from his mouth. Not even close. 

I press my lips to the bend of his knee, watching the wet slide of my fingers. Ciel is not looking—or he is, but not down there. At _me_. Sometimes a gaze can be felt, sensed, and his gaze carries with it an almost physical pressure. Roving, lustful, ever-pleading. I lift my own gaze to meet it, and move my hand faster.

How am I still holding on? That roaring pulse of blood in my ears is maddening, not unlike the buzz of intoxication that held sway over me the entire night. I listen to Ciel’s pitched cries, to his desperate mantra of ‘please please please’ as I drive my fingers into the snug heat of his body, and each ‘please’ drives me that one step closer to losing my mind. At this point it feels like I’m begging _myself_ , bargaining vehemently with my own stubbornness, arguing that enough is enough and I should have long since given him what we both want so badly.

And maybe I should.

“Yes _yes_ please,” Ciel chants as I rub myself against his entrance, slipping the tip inside, and the last ‘please’ dies drowned in a flood of pornographic moans as I slam in the rest of my cock and start fucking him too hard, too soon, because that’s the only way I seem to know how to do it. He just has that effect on me, and I can’t help it. 

I lift his hips off the bed, forcing his spine into a painful arch. His knees are trembling, arms flailing and pushing at the headboard to steady himself against the brutal rhythm of my thrusts. I try to tighten my grip and hold him still, but his skin is too slippery and my hands end up skidding all the way up to his waist, circling it almost whole like a girdle.

He’s so thin. So tiny, and his scars feel rough under the pads of my fingers. I want to twist him around, mark my way down his back and watch him take my cock as I watched him take my fingers; I want to slip out when he’s about to come and tease him to the point of tears, until he can’t even beg, but it feels too good to stop and I must save the games for later. There can be no more stalling, no more drawing it out.

Ciel is the first to come apart, finally allowed past the brink, and I don’t stop hammering into him as he writhes in the throes of his strung-out orgasm. I relish in the spectacle of it, performed just for me without the curtain of darkness, and my own pleasure peaks after his in a frantic instant. It’s nothing like the quick relief of my own hand; it’s pure, bone-deep bliss that sweeps over me from head toe and traps my breath high within my chest.

 _Finally_. Utter satiation. I push in languidly a few more times, rubbing slow circles into Ciel’s hip, and when my eyelids droop down I don’t fight them but give myself over to the slow spread of fatigue—

And then my vision spins, blurs, until suddenly I’m the one my back and Ciel is the one on top. He pins down my shoulders, straddling my hips with his sweaty thighs, and it feels like there is more strength in his body than there is in mine, like I could not wrestle him off if I wanted.

I blink up at him slowly, hazily. His chest is heaving, slick with sperm, skin flushed like it couldn’t bear another touch—but his eyes are still wild with lust, with mischief, gleaming down at me like he has sin on his mind.

There is no trace of satiation in them. Once wasn’t enough.

“What’s wrong? We’re not done, are we?” Ciel asks, tracing a finger under my jaw. “Come on, Sebastian; you’re the one who wanted to have everything at once. You’re the one who’s been breathing down my neck every night and feeling me up whenever you got the chance. Always so greedy, always so impatient...” He brushes his lips over my cheek, as I had done to him before, and ends with a light peck just next to my ear. “You always want to take so much, and now you suddenly can’t give? Tsk, such disappointing stamina. I was sure you’d want to make up for the entire week.” 

He licks my neck, a hot lingering drag up the side—and then he tightens abruptly around my softening cock, forcing a sharp hiss past my teeth. 

I’m oversensitive. Overwrought. His breath burns my skin like steam and the wet clench of his walls is unbearable. 

“Well? Can you get it up again, old man? Or maybe you’ll _please_ let me come in your mouth, after all?” Ciel licks his lips and swipes his thumb over mine.

I can’t go three times in a row, it’s impossible. 

But then I can’t tell him that I can’t.

“I need… a minute.”

Ciel tuts, shaking his head. “I don’t want it in a minute, I want it _now_.”

And then his lips are on mine, soft and at once rough, possessive, devouring my already scarce breath. He can’t take no for an answer, can he? More so even than I. His tongue curls deep, his hands trail down my sides, but it’s not a touch that resembles our earlier scuffle of limbs or blind fumbling in the dark. It’s precise, deliberate, intrusive. It feels like I’m being touched for the very first time.

And slowly, impossibly, my blood starts rushing down again.

Ciel moans and rolls his hips. Back then forth, rocking in circles until I’m half-hard. A trickle of cum leaks out of him as he moves in my lap, seeping down the inside of his thigh and smearing over my pelvis. So full already, yet still craving more.

He lifts off my cock, leans back, and drops heavily down.  
  
It hurts. But then he does it again, and again, until I can no longer tell what it is that I’m feeling. A bizarre hybrid of pleasure and pain, an overstimulating mix of sensations. I don’t know which one is stronger, or where one ends and the other begins. The pleasure is forced, torturous, and the pain deliriously addictive, prickling all over my body like so many needles, like a swarm of tiny electric sparks. I don’t like the sounds that I’m making, low and visceral but oddly subdued, and the word that tries to force its way to the tip of my tongue is the one word I won’t abide—a word I should only ever hear spoken but never stoop to speaking myself. 

It wouldn’t work, anyway. The pace is harsh, demanding, and my cock throbs painfully with each fall of Ciel’s hips. I can’t endure it, and yet I can’t stop grinding up. The look on his face is that of pure pleasure – rosebud lips wet and panting, eyes opened just enough to still see me – so I wedge my thumbs between his undermost ribs and start pushing. I do it hard, as though trying to dislodge the bone, then harder until I see a twitch of pain, and still harder until he whimpers for me to stop. 

I don’t stop. He tries to swat me away, pinch and then pry off my thumbs, but I’m not letting go and he starts hurting me back. His fingernails assault my knuckles, wrists, scratching out a trail of angry red welts up the entire length of my arms. Burrowing at the inside of my elbows as though he wanted to scratch out my veins. Would he make me bleed now, if he could?

Neither of us is relenting. Ciel only rides me harder, half-sobbing and half-moaning, so consumed in the struggle that his climax takes him by violent surprise. It overwhelms him with its suddenness, with its unbridled intensity. His face draws up in hurt and bliss and confusion, like he doesn’t understand what’s happening and doesn’t really like for it to be feeling so good. He’s clenching, convulsing, fucking himself down frantically on my cock, and the way he looks down at me as he peaks is almost scandalised, accusing, as if it’s all my fault that he’s this way and I should be held accountable. He claws into me one final time, leaving one final scratch before his body slumps tiredly forward, supported only by the crushing grip of my hands. Frazzled, but finally sated.

And he could climb off me now, couldn’t he? Just leave me in that agonising state of too-much-but-not-enough, roused and stranded between wanting more but wanting it to be over. He could do all that, laughing all the while in my face, but he doesn’t. 

“A-Are you close yet?” he chokes out. Thighs shaking, hips stuttering. And I don’t know if I’m close, I’m just _aching_ everywhere at once. My hands let go of his waist and drop down to his cheeks, spreading him wider as I keep pumping erratically in and out. I have to be close, this has to end.

Ciel is almost crying now, almost fainting, and it’s that thin film of tears in his eyes that pushes me once more over the edge. The orgasm is _wrenched_ out of me without build-up: a few short spurts and dry throbbing, a rapid explosion of heat that spreads like wildfire but goes out in a matter of seconds, leaving me burnt to a crisp.

But it’s over. Ciel slips off my sore cock and topples lifelessly against my chest. Now there’s only breathing – focusing on inhale and exhale like it’s a strange new skill to be mastered, or a toilsome challenge to overcome. I didn’t even realise how badly I needed oxygen; it just didn’t seem all that important compared to everything else. And it’s not the greatest relief now either, not when that ravaging ache of overstimulation fades finally from my exhausted body. The scratches still sting, but my heart slows down beat by beat and my vision loses its fuzzy filter. The furniture regains shape, as if I’ve put on a pair of glasses, and the window once more shows a view.

Only time still flows a little strangely; ten minutes tick by, though I can only tell because of the clock on the wall. And then Ciel starts fidgeting, long since recovered, upsetting the perfect stillness of the room. He busies himself with counting the love marks on my skin, tracing his finger from one to another like he’s connecting dots on a map. And really, he’s left so many that I will have to wear a turtleneck, like him, and borrow his concealer for the one he’s planted right on the angle of my jaw.

Five more minutes. Ciel pulls himself up on one elbow and brings a hand to my hair, smoothing it out as he studies the vacant lines of my face.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he speaks up in the softest voice. “Don’t get caught.”

I don’t answer at once; my mind needs a moment to catch up with his words. I was busy playing back all the ways in which he said ‘please’, and imagining the bruises that my thumbs will have left on his ribs. I just need to wait one day for them to bloom. 

“Why not? Didn’t it bother you that I always get away with everything? Weren’t you wondering why no one can see my true nature?”

Ciel huffs. “I didn’t mean it like _that_! Not like I want that to change.”

“But you were right. See, fooling the world with my tailored disguise isn’t quite as fun as it used to be ten years ago.”

“‘The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived’,” Ciel recites. “A Latin saying. Sometimes it’s better to keep lying because the world can’t handle the truth.”

“But I don’t care what the world wants, or what it can or can’t handle. When the whole world is fooled and no one ever suspects me, it gets boring.” 

A moment of silence. Contemplative, but mostly disapproving.

“Is that why you’re so taken with me? Because I wasn’t fooled?”

“Ah. William could see it too, and I was certainly never taken with him.”

“William?” Ciel frowns. “Your Oxford sweetheart?”

“Yes. Which reminds me that I told him everything yesterday at the party, right after you phoned me. He must be the one who notified the police.”

Ciel bolts upright, gaping at me with wide eyes. “Everything??”

“The general picture.”

“Just— _why_?”

“You know why. It’s who I am.”

“No, it’s _what_ you are!” he exclaims, slamming his hands on either side of my head. “An insatiable, irredeemable beast that—” 

The words die on his lips with the flame of his anger, extinguished by the cold calm of my eyes. He hovers above me, suddenly listless, as if unsure how he’d even got there.

“Why am I angry? You can do whatever the hell you want.”

“Perhaps. But it wasn’t what _you_ wanted me to do.”

He drops back on the sheets with a resigned huff.

“You say I know, but I don’t. Not really. You’re a beast, yes, but not a senseless one. How does it make sense to risk everything for a drunken kill? To chance getting caught like a common, brainless thug after getting so far? It’s just”—he breathes a small but bitter laugh—“so much unlike you.”

“It’s what I live for. If I can’t do what thrills me just so I can continue to live free—ah, now isn’t that a paradox? Why live free at all, then? It would feel like being caged up anyway.”

“But isn’t it still better to do it safely instead of never again at all? If you get caught—”

“I know what happens, of course. Just like you knew what would happen if you got caught killing Chamber, but you went along with it anyway. Retribution was all that mattered.”

He sighs, conceding. I turn to the side and cup his cheek, still tinged a fading red.

“Don’t you worry, my pretty little snowflake. Things have a way of working out in my favour.”

“Clearly.” He narrows his eyes. “Everyone has their ups and downs but not you, huh? Just remember that nothing lasts forever, especially if you tread such a fine line. And once you do finally take the fall… it’s going to be from quite the formidable height indeed.” He bites at his pouty lip and adds, on a second thought, with all the regret I lack myself:

“Not unlike poor Mademoiselle Rousselot, I suppose. A spectacular, thirty-meter plunge. Splat.”

“At least I will be my own undoing. Live by the sword, die by the sword.” I smile, stroking my thumb over his cheek. “Or did you mean to imply that I have something else to live for now?...”

He flushes and darts from the bed as if burned. “No, fuck you. Die by the sword for all I care.”

And then he’s gone. Bare, scarred, he skips over to the bathroom and slams the door shut. I hear him run the shower and can only guess that the water is either sweltering hot or bone-chilling cold.

There was that look again, wasn’t it? And he’d lied for me so prettily, too. 

Hmm.

I don’t move, comparing the ceiling with the one in my bedroom. It’s somehow all I can think of—that washed beige paint and carved mouldings—while Ciel, in the shower, must surely be wrestling with greater concerns.

Minutes drag idly by. I don’t count them, but I do count the blemishes on the ceiling. And is that a tiny crack in the left corner? Yes, potentially.

The shower turns off and gives way to silence. 

“Ciel?” I call out. “You said it’s our last day. And we haven’t gone out much together at all, have we? Not even around Trocadéro, and it’s so close.”

Definitely a crack. Or just a scraping? Ciel re-emerges from the bathroom before I can decide, pale skin taut and covered in goosebumps. Bone-chilling cold, then.

“Aww,” he drawls, and it’s the most malicious ‘aww’ I’ve ever heard. “Did you want to go on a romantic walk? Kiss and hold hands under the Eiffel Tower?” 

“Not unless you still want me to get arrested.”

“Pff. It doesn’t matter what I want. You’ll get yourself arrested one way or the other, except the sentence for raping a minor is shorter than the one for murder.” 

“My, someone’s touchy today.”

He wrinkles his nose. “Just shut up and get in the shower. If you can still move, that is.”


End file.
